A new framework for learning through play, has been developed to support teachers in the classroom and help guide policy and practice in the early years of schooling.
The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the LEGO Foundation have worked together to develop the framework. Senior Research Fellow Rachel Parker and Research Fellow Amy Berry – from ACER’s Education and Development research program – say it has the potential to create a better understanding of learning through play at school and improve the quality of execution.
Writing in ACER’s Discover, the researchers say learning through play is considered an effective approach in the early years. ‘However, while the early years encompass children up to the age of eight, there is currently no common language for learning through play at school, or way to determine how well it is done. … Without a common language, learning through play at school remains in the “good ideas unrealized” category of education research.’
Parker and Berry explain the framework uses an expanded definition of learning through play that draws on contemporary research. It was developed following a scoping review (Parker & Thomsen, 2019) which looked at the role and impact of learning through play at school.
The four components
The new framework outlines four components for effectual implementation:
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Student experience of learning – providing opportunities for joyful, actively engaging, meaningful, iterative, and socially interactive learning.
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Learning outcomes – thinking about more than literacy and numeracy skills.
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Facilitation – the best teaching approach for the desired learning outcome.
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Design – how well resources (students, teachers, materials, learning environment) are used to achieve the desired learning experience.
Parker and Berry say, importantly, the framework is school ready. ‘It considers the language of primary school and constraints of school learning, including accountability for skills attainment and curriculum content.’
There are also guiding questions for educators which can be used to identify gaps and opportunities to strengthen playful practices and form school-based action research projects.
Parker, Berry, and ACER Research Fellow Kellie Picker have previously discussed some characteristics of playful learning at school. They explained the five characteristics are:
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Joy – feelings of curiosity, accomplishment, enthusiasm;
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Iteration – repetition, experimentation, trial, and error;
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Meaning – making connections, deep learning, motivation;
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Engrossment – minds on, interested, invested in learning; and,
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Social interaction – communicating, sharing, collaborating.
Play is holistic and provides children with a variety of support including mental and emotional well-being, social interactions, and physical challenges. The premise for this paper underscores the critical importance that children play and study the world with relevance, authenticity, and developmentally appropriate opportunities. Infancy settings become an extraordinary space for this natural and holistic learning to occur. After describing how the play most effectively accommodates children’s unique needs and individual development, the authors explain how learning through play provides children the opportunities to grow in a risk-free environment, communicate with peers, express emotion and thoughts, discover and investigate various subjects, improve social-emotional skills, develop language and vocabulary, enhance cognitive capacity, build self-esteem, steel oneself against life, and establish a foundation for the subsequent stage of school. Infancy teachers can help students to do all this and more by providing learning through play.
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