Does play belong in the primary school classroom?

Learning through play has emerged as an important strategy to promote student engagement, inclusion, and holistic skills development beyond the preschool years. If we want to build an education system preparing children for lifelong learning, we can use these strategies and achieve a balance of academic growth, holistic skills and a joy of learning. This presentation addresses the disconnect between policy, research, and practice, by summarising 5 key findings from international studies and 4 challenges to connect policy and practice. The evidence that play supports learning is considerable, and a new framework can create continuity between the early years learning contexts and implementation in schools

Learning Through Play: Increasing impact, Reducing inequality

What is the potential of children's play to promote equality in outcomes and address learning gaps between children from more advantaged and less advantaged backgrounds? Drawing evidence from early childhood learning programmes across 18 countries, as well as from interviews with the authors of various contributing studies, this report aims to understand whether and how the evidence about play and learning relates to tackling the learning crisis, especially in terms of inequality in learning outcomes around the globe.This report published by the LEGO Foundation shows that play not only helps children learn, it also supports inclusion, and reduces inequality, therefore demonstrating that policymakers and international organisations need to pay close attention to play. Building on their findings, the authors suggest four areas for future investment, innovation and investigation

Learning Through Play at School: A Framework for Policy and Practice

Learning through play has emerged as an important strategy to promote student engagement, inclusion, and holistic skills development beyond the preschool years. Policy makers, researchers and educators have promoted the notion that learning though play is developmentally appropriate - as it leverages school-age children’s innate curiosity while easing the often difficult transition from preschool to school. However, there is a dearth of evidence and practical guidance on how learning through play can be employed effectively in the formal school context, and the conditions that support success. This paper addresses the disconnect between policy, research and practice by presenting a range of empirical studies across a number of well-known pedagogies. These studies describe how children can foster cognitive, social, emotional, creative and physical skills through active engagement in learning that is experienced as joyful, meaningful, socially interactive, actively engaging and iterative. The authors propose an expanded definition for learning through play at school based on the science of learning, and summarize key findings from international studies on the impact of children’s learning through play. They identify four key challenges that underpin the considerable gap between education policy and practice, and propose a useful framework that addresses these challenges via a common language and structure to implement learning through play

Learning through play at school: A study of playful integrated pedagogies that foster children’s holistic skills development in the primary school classroom

This scoping study seeks to understand the role and impact of learning through play at school. The evidence supporting learning through play’s positive impact on child development is strong. Yet many education systems have reduced opportunities for playful learning and increased emphasis on didactic and structured approaches to learning for school readiness and achievement. A re-calibration is needed, as experts have established that play supports the development of early literacy and numeracy skills while also cultivating children’s social, emotional, physical and creative skills. Eight pedagogical approaches are identified, namely active learning, collaborative and cooperative learning, experiential learning, guided discovery learning, inquiry-based learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, and Montessori education. These pedagogies can altogether create learning experiences for children that are meaningful, actively engaging, iterative, socially interactive and joyful

Educational interventions involving physical manipulatives for improving children's learning and development: A scoping review

Physical manipulatives (PMs) are concrete objects used during hands-on learning activities (e.g., building blocks, fraction tiles, counters), and are widely used in primary-school teaching, especially during maths instruction. This scoping review collated studies that have examined the effectiveness of educational PM interventions with pre-primary and primary-age children. A total of 102 studies met the inclusion criteria and were synthesised in the review. Most studies included a sample of children aged 4–6 years and were conducted in a school setting. They spanned 26 different countries, but almost all took place in high- or middle-income contexts, mainly in the USA. Interventions were grouped into three main learning domains: maths, literacy and science. Considerable heterogeneity was identified across the review studies in terms of the PMs and hands-on activities used (e.g., block building, shape sorting, paper folding, enactment with figurines). Evidence relating to effectiveness of the intervention programmes was synthesised, with the most promising findings identified in the maths domain. Benefits to children's spatial, literacy and science skills were also reported. Overall, however, the evidence was mixed: other studies found that PMs were not associated with learning benefits, and many were hindered by methodological shortcomings. This calls for caution when drawing conclusions about the overall effectiveness of PM interventions. Nevertheless, the findings illustrate the many ways hands-on PM activities can be incorporated into children's early learning experiences. Recommendations for further research and for using PMs in practice are made

Researching digital inequalities in children’s play with technology in South Africa

This paper reports on the South African findings from an international mixed methods study between the LEGO Foundation, Dubit and the Universities of Sheffield (England) and Cape Town (South Africa) on young children’s learning with digital technology. The findings of the study, the first of its kind in South Africa, show the consistency of qualities and experience of play, but also reveal socio-economic, linguistic, ethnic, gender and racial inequalities in the play environments of both groups of 3–11-year-olds. Yet, despite these structural inequalities, the play ecologies of children in resource-constrained environments show their creativity within the digital/non-digital environment. The paper discusses some of the analytical tools used and the geo-political issues raised, and considers these in conjunction with selected data. We conclude that the different socio-cultural conditions and geo-political realities offer new insights about the role global education research can play in helping combat structural inequalities in resource-constraine