Educational Ecology- Teaching and Learning Through Play

I've been teaching for over 16 years now across the whole branch of primary education. I've seen the introduction of learning through inquiry, technology, etc. I'm also very much interested in the science of learning both in a social and biological context. And I know this: within a scientific context, classrooms are not natural learning environments for children.

Classrooms were created during the industrial revolution to impart much needed skills to create a future workforce. Period. They were designed to stream (through biased means) and level outcomes to create the multi-tiered educational system that most countries have today. The discriminatory component in education is simply there to mirror the capitalist output component within the system and mirrors each country's value set, for example, Finland vs the US systems.

Neurologically speaking, up until the age of about 21 years, one of the most important cognitive functions in humans is to develop the prefrontal cortex. The bit that makes us, amongst other things, able to create incredibly complex tools to interact effectively with our environment. One of the main developments in childhood is in the foundations of our executive function.

One of the curious things about humans, especially young humans, is that a lot of our brain wiring is experience expectant. We need certain experiences to wire certain critical parts of our brain and learn important skills like emotional regulation. To develop our executive function in the early years, we need to experience certain things in certain ways to make those neurological connections.

Part of this connects directly to what Vygotsky called the Zone of Proximal Development.

Source

Vygotsky's work has often been represented as a learner's next learning steps in academic development, but his theory, like Piaget, came mainly from observations of children at play.

Much has been talked about in the last four years or so about the need to grow learner agency, 21st century skills, creativity, etc. What all that is is basically the development of executive function: goal setting, self-regulation, working memory, creativity, focus, etc.

The most exciting and troubling thing is that children's brains are wired to seek experiences that develop executive function. They're called urges or play schema. All children across the globe have them. They are innate to all humans. And they do not stop when children turn five.

Climbing is an urge. A child climbing a tree experiences a challenge that grows the prefrontal context functions. She will test herself over and over, her balance, her sense of fear and learn where her physical and emotional limits are. Over time she will push herself, develop coping mechanisms to overcome her fear, possibly fall, get stuck, try new movements and finally reach a sense of accomplishment when she gets to where she wants to go. Through this experience, she is developing gross motor skills alongside skills to cope with fear and anxiety (growth mindset) and problem solve. She will be watching others who already know how to climb and they might even share some tips (ZPD- the knowledgeable other). There is agency, self-regulation, intrinsic motivation, emotional regulation, goal setting, creativity, problem-solving in this type of experience (that can be transferable into the classroom if we're clever). Children who are involved in high-quality play practice all of the 21st century skills we are so focused on right now. But how many schools have banned climbing trees?

Classrooms are not natural learning environments for children. Most classroom learning programmes today are not designed to give children the time and space to meet the neurological development required to develop self-regulation and agency.

Our classrooms were designed at a time when children were free to roam after school and meet those urges outside of the instructional time. But that time and space that children had has changed alongside the ever-increasing content load placed on schools. The outcome stakes in education continue to climb without a thought for the toll on children's developmental needs. Most parents and teachers (and school leaders) cannot see play as a legitimate learning experience for children past the age of five. Professor Peter Gray proposes that this is a clear factor in the increase of anxiety that we see in younger and younger children. You can watch him explain this further here.

We cannot continue to talk about children's mental health and wellbeing in education without a hard look at how we are providing for their neurological developmental needs. As educators, we learn very little about this branch in our training (unless you're in early childhood education). And we need to know!

In New Zealand, we are incredibly lucky to have a group of trailblazers who have begun to study and create ways of the 'how to' do this while meeting the New Zealand Curriculum. Longworth Education has developed the How to teach and learn through play while also doing all the other stuff that we need to do through direct instructions across the spectrum of the primary years. Learning through play is authentic self-directed Inquiry Learning for all ages. I call it Inquiry Learning 3.0.

Have a look at Longworth Education's work because the children that we said goodbye to on the 23rd of March will need something very different when they get back to school. Their wellbeing needs to be our focus. This pandemic will change our world and we have an opportunity to change education for the better.

Let's not just recycle the old with added fancy technology tools.