Playful Learning

Teaching in a university context is often regulated by longstanding educational practices that mostly support static and hierarchical teaching methods (e.g. lecturing, sitting down, taking notes, language-based learning). This project seeks to open up these structures by exploring playfulness as an educational approach. Playfulness, as an orientation, can help to resist the static and hierarchical, and foreground embodiment and dynamic exchange. This approach is particularly appropriate in the context of children's media and culture, as playfulness is often understood as an important contribution by children to otherwise adult-oriented forms of learning and communicating. By including playfulness into our teaching practices at CLMC, we include this child-like orientation into our own learning and teach our students (many of whom will work with children in their professional lives) to become familiar with playfulness as a communication strategy.