Askwith Forum // The Power of Playful Learning

Creating educational settings that bring “school” and “play” together

Panelists:
• Susan Harris MacKay, Pedagogical Director, Museum Center for Learning and Opal School, Portland Children’s Museum
• Jack Shonkoff, Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development, HGSE and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital; Director, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
• Lynneth Solis, Ed.M.’10, Ed.D.’18, Senior Research Manager, Project Zero, HGSE
• Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Vice-President and Chair of Learning through Play, The LEGO Foundation

Moderator: Benjamin Mardell, Principal Investigator, Project Zero, HGSE

We learn through play. In play, we learn how to collaborate and negotiate rules and relationships. In play, we imagine, create, think flexibly and critically, and solve problems. Play provides important pathways for social, intellectual, physical, and emotional growth. Yet informal play and formal schooling are not always an easy combination. This session focuses on creating formal educational settings (preK through high school) where playful learning thrives.

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Since its founding in 1920, the Harvard Graduate School of Education has been training leaders to transform education in the United States and around the globe. Today, our faculty, students, and alumni are studying and solving the most critical challenges facing education: student assessment, the achievement gap, urban education, and teacher shortages, to name just a few. Our work is shaping how people teach, learn, and lead in schools and colleges as well as in after-school programs, high-tech companies, and international organizations. The HGSE community is pushing the frontiers of education, and the effects of our entrepreneurship are improving the world.

[dantevivanco]

I'm very happy to see this video. The education is first.

[Msadlo]

This is funny…..particularly the paper exploration….😅

[diabetesenequilibrio]

I would like to know what the science is doing for our realy society. Because we have so much knowledge about the relevance to play for learning but the tradicional education keep being the main method to "educate" children. We must start to do something to change the minds of our teachers. Please scientistis it´s time to do, it´s time to play with the knowledge we have.

[evegoodmon]

I can’t imagine this lot playing 😢, ask academics how to ruin play and here it is… nothing about imagining and spontaneity