Learning Landscapes: Playing the Way to Learning and Engagement in Public Spaces

Children from under-resourced communities regularly enter formal schooling lagging behind their peers. These deficits in areas such as language development, reading readiness, and even in the kind of spatial skills that predict later mathematical knowledge, may persist throughout their lifespan. To address such gaps, policymakers have focused largely on schooling as the great equalizer. Yet, children only spend 20% of their waking hours in school. How can developmental scientists and educators address this “other 80%” for the benefit of children’s development? One answer is the Learning Landscapes initiative, which involves crafting carefully planned play experiences that focus on learning outcomes, particularly for children and families from under-resourced communities. Playful learning, a broad pedagogical approach featuring child-directed play methods, provides a unique way to foster learning and engagement organically within the built environment. Learning Landscapes already incorporates several well-documented projects. The Ultimate Block Party brought over 50,000 people to Central Park to engage in playful learning activities. Supermarkets became hotspots for caregiver-child interaction by simply adding prompts for caregiver-child interaction through signage in everyday “trapped” experiences. Urban Thinkscape transformed a bus stop and adjacent lot into a hub for playful learning while families were waiting for public transportation. Finally, Parkopolis is a life-size human board game that fosters STEM and reasoning skills in public spaces. This paper reflects on data from these projects while reflecting on lessons learned and future directions

Infancia y aprendizaje

Título, resumen y palabras clave también en inglésResumen basado en el de la publicaciónLos juegos desempeñan un papel importante en la infancia. Dan lugar a horas de actividad e interacción social y probablemente también a gran cantidad de aprendizaje. Los juegos de mesa, de cartas o al aire libre (como el ‘pilla pilla’) son los primeros que vienen a la mente, pero en 2017, los juegos son también digitales. Se ofrece una perspectiva novedosa y se sitúan los juegos reglados en el constructo denominado ‘aprendizaje lúdico’. Se analizan los elementos claves del aprendizaje lúdico y los dos subtipos existentes: el juego libre y el juego dirigido. Se sugiere que los juegos reglados promueven el aprendizaje de maneras muy similares a otras situaciones de aprendizaje lúdico. Estos juegos implican diversión, sentido de la curiosidad y la inhibición de la realidad en contextos activos, participativos, significativos y socialmente interactivos.Biblioteca del Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; [email protected]

Effects of Teacher-Delivered Book Reading and Play on Vocabulary Learning and Self-Regulation among Low-Income Preschool Children

<p>There is a need for empirically based educational practices shown to support learning, yet validation tends to require a high degree of experimental control that can limit ecological validity and translation to classrooms. We describe our iterative intervention design to support preschoolers’ vocabulary through book reading coupled with playful learning, including the process of translating research-based methods to an authentic teacher-delivered intervention. Effectiveness of the teacher-implemented intervention was examined by comparing book reading alone versus book reading plus play in supporting vocabulary development in preschoolers (<i>N </i>= 227) from low-income families with diverse backgrounds. Teachers used definitions, gestures, and pictures to teach vocabulary. During play, teachers led play with story-related figurines while using target vocabulary. Ten teachers read books and engaged children in play (read + play [R + P]), and 6 used only book reading (read-only [RO]). For children in both the R + P and RO conditions, within-subjects analyses of gains on taught versus control words revealed large effects on receptive (R + P, <i>d </i>= 1.08; RO, <i>d </i>= 0.92) and expressive vocabulary (R + P, <i>d </i>= 1.41; RO, <i>d =</i>1.23). Read-only had a statistically significant effect (<i>d =</i> 0.20) on a standardized measure of receptive vocabulary, but there were no statistically significant differences between conditions. Moderate to large effects were found using an expressive task when words were tested 4 months after they were taught. Implications for curriculum design and the potential benefits of enhancing children’s vocabulary through book reading and playful learning are discussed.</p