Thinking and learning about play

I’ve just finished a MOOC (massive open online course) on play, with Futurelearn and the University of Sheffield: Exploring Play. Ideas about play have been coming up quite a bit in my work in the last few years – both in teaching (gamification, exploration) and in research (particularly in the research I’ve been doing into kids and coding). But I didn’t really know much about theoretical or practical ideas of play, particularly not outside of computing, so I signed up for a MOOC to take the broader look.

I found that earlier on in this course, the readings about play types enriched my conception of what play could be. Thinking about play in terms of taxonomies of play (rough and tumble play, imaginative play, etc.) has helped me break down what we mean when we say play, and I have found it useful to think about the things children do in terms of these taxonomies. I even found myself wondering how many different kinds of play particular activities or equipment affording, and wondering if I could alter activities to include more variety in play type. There’s an implicit assumption here, which is that play is good, and lots of types of play is better than one type of play. This has clear implications for the kinds of work we do with schoolkids (and to a lesser extent with uni students); a lot of our activities have time for exploratory play (“what does this do”). Thinking about play types leads us to try and incorporate other types of play e.g. creative play (“what can i make this do”, “what can I make with this”), mastery play (“can I get better at playing with this”), communication play (“can I use this to communicate?”). This brings more variety into the activity which may well end up with deeper learning.

The course was very broad, which I liked – I did it to get the big picture, and for that it really succeeded. We looked at cross-cultural play, online play, the spaces we play in, historical attitudes to play, disability and play…

Thinking about how those with disabilities can access play turned a lot of my ideas upside down: thinking in terms of play as activities with particular values leads to a normative understanding of play. The taxonomies provide a rich conception of what play could be, but they don’t dictate what it should be. Reading case studies about play and disability showed me that this normative conception (play should be educational, for example), doesn’t have to hold. Play doesn’t have to be something that lets children rehearse ideas for the real world. It can be something for itself – catching a ball repeatedly, fidget spinners, and other repetitive actions can all be playful in some way. These could be seen as mastery play, developing close motor skills, or they could just be play. Allowing people the time, space, and equipment to explore play with whatever actions they are able is something we need to do for our children and for ourselves.

In all I enjoyed the MOOC a lot – I think it will take a while for the ideas to settle in my mind as we touched briefly on a lot of different topics, but I also think that some of the things I’ve learned will be put in to action in my teaching and outreach activities pretty soon.