Learning as Play
This post is an excerpt from my recent Master’s Thesis entitled: “Caught in the rush of the news: the young, the old and the promise of educational technology”
As a bit of context, I argue through my thesis that the psychological archetypes of the young (puer) and the old (senex) are a useful way to consider technology in education. Throughout the thesis I equate technology with the puer archetype and the traditional structures or discplines with the senex.
Play can be defined as the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. But when play happens with a medium for learning it creates a context in which information, idea and passions grow. (Brown and Thomas, 2011, chapter 1)
So far we have seen that within the puer (young) and senex (old) archetypes are inherent positive and negative characteristics, and that the key to drawing out the best in either is to recognize the importance of the world that they share. Pivotal at this point of the thesis is a discussion of the notion of play as a way of shedding light on how the puer and senex might move beyond their negative manifestations in relation to the shared world. As a way to begin our exploration on play, Gadamer becomes helpful, as the concept receives significant explanation in his work Truth and Method.
According to Gadamer, if we begin by thinking of ourselves involved in the playing of a particular game, it becomes apparent that the experience of play is something that exists in a different way than the subjective experiences of the individual players. Play has a unique ontology. In the act of play, the consciousness of the player is taken up in the game. In play, the player is caught up in something, “beyond their wanting and doing.” (Gadamer 1989, p. xxviii) This experience of the consciousness of a player being caught up is why the act of play is so enjoyable. Said another way, the ontological nature or being of play is something that exists separate to, and more accurately between the players involved.
While we are apt to view the act of play as merely puerile and playful, Gadamer reminds us that we must approach play with a particular level of seriousness, a seriousness that is required order to keep a game going. “Seriousness is not merely something that calls us away from play; rather, seriousness in playing is necessary to make the play wholly play” (Gadamer 1989, p.103). We need only watch young children play games of imagination to see the focus and cognitive commitment that is needed in order to maintain a certain level of play. Participating players must have an understanding of the rules and play within them for the enjoyment of a game to continue. In fact, it is more than just the enjoyment of the game, the very existence of the game, as a suspension of reality, requires that the players maintain adherence to the seriousness of the game. “Play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in play.” (Gadamer 1989, p.103) The existence of play requires a consistent and maintained seriousness from all players involved.
Here John Seely Brown provides further insight into the importance of play, bringing with him a strong affinity toward emerging technologies. Brown, (2009) drawing on the work of Johan Huizinga, suggests that “play is not merely central to the human experience; it is constitutive of all that is meaningful in human culture.” Play is not to be seen as rooted in a particular culture or isolated component of a particular culture, rather we need to understand that culture is created by play. “Play is not something we do; it is who we are.” (Brown 2009) In Brown’s view, play is so fundamental to understanding human experience that he suggests we must view ourselves as Homo Ludens (human as player) in addition to Homo Sapiens (human as knower) and Homo Faber (human as maker). Understanding the notion of Homo Ludens is necessary to foster a complete understanding of both what it means to be human, as well as developing a full and complete notion of knowledge and learning. It is the act of play that opens up spaces of experimentation and imagination. Play is learning, a concept we know from watching children at play.
This notion of play becomes useful as we discuss its importance within a classroom setting. Through our exploration so far, we have come to recognize how the puer/senex duality requires something beyond them to draw out their positive aspects. We cannot hope to resolve the tension by merely creating situations for the young and old to interact, we must create proper situations of ‘play’ – conditions that create possibilities for the young and the old to reveal the best in each other. In Brown’s view, (2009) play exists in the gap between what ‘is’ or what already we know (senex) and what’s possible or what we hope to create that isn’t yet (puer). Here we have an important piece in understanding the nature of puer/senex complex in educational contexts; play exists in the space between something known and something not yet complete.
Play can be defined as the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. But when play happens with a medium for learning it creates a context in which information, idea and passions grow. (Brown and Thomas, 2011, chapter 1)
So then what conditions of play create possibilities for the puer and senex to reveal their positive aspects? To start with, we must look past the puer/senex complex and begin to discuss the importance of the topic around which the two can meet. The topic itself must create the possibilities for play, because, as we have seen, the puer/senex complex left on its own will not resolve the tension between them. What the peur/senex complex require, in order to be in right relation, is a ‘field of play’ or context that opens up with possibility or abundance. What both the puer and the senex require, in order to get past the inherent polarity of their relationship, is a topic that calls on them, requires something of them, beyond their own individual nature. “Understanding begins when something addresses us.” (Gadamer 1989, p. 299)
At the offset, we must recognize that not all topics or contexts are going to create a useful field of play between the puer and the senex. In fact, the opposite has more often been the case. The history of public education, particularly throughout the 20th century, has built the institution of education around notions of lack and scarcity (Jardine et al., 2006, introduction), and around an understanding of knowledge that it is something finished and complete. The mechanistic, factory approach to education reduces topics to disconnected, isolated, reproducible chunks of information. If classroom conditions are built around a perspective that views knowledge as scarce and complete then the puer/senex relationship suffers from a lack of space, opportunity and possibility. There is nowhere to go, nothing to create or renew. The industrial model of education is all senex and no puer. The curriculum is all decided (the knowledge already ‘is’) with no opportunity or space for both teachers and students to become or create or imagine. If we view curriculum guides and program of studies in such a way that “nothing can happen,” then the space for play needed by the puer/senex complex disappears and the relationship is reduced to rebellion, hyperactivity and boredom by the puer, and control, management and anger by the senex. If the complex beauty of the world is reduced to worksheets, then the opportunity for play is gone, and we are left managing the emerging conflict between the puer/senex archetypes.
On the other hand, what might happen if we approached curriculum topics as abundant, or alive, unfinished conversations with space to ‘become.’ How might schooling look differently if we approached learning as the play between what is known and what is not yet? This could be framed as taking an inquiry approach to the disciplines we teach. The starting point for an inquiry-based stance is to see the material in our curricula as topics or topica (L. spaces) as opposed to disconnected, isolated, and trivialized bits facts and skills. In their best and truest form, the topics we teach are alive and actually exist in the world beyond our classrooms walls. Be it history, mathematics, biology, art history, psychology, the content of our programs of study actually exist out there in the world, beyond the walls of our classrooms. As educators we don’t need to invent or fabricate space or possibilities within the topics we teach – they exist already in their natural form. The disciplines we are entrusted to introduce to students are actually alive and breathing, dynamic and ever changing. And most importantly, the disciplines are not yet finished. They, like us and the students we teach, are still in the process of becoming. If we take this approach to the content of schooling, the work for teachers is to search for and then design learning around the spaces between what is known about a particular topic (senex) and what might be imagined or created (puer).
Inherent in the curriculum topics we teach is the potential to provide the necessary space and play for the puer/senex to bring out the best in each other. However, the ability to see the abundance or possibility within the curriculum topics requires something of the teacher; that we nurture and develop our ability to see and enter into the inherent possibilities. Popular math blogger Dan Meyer sums it up well: “I don’t trust myself to be an effective inquiry-based teacher if I’m not living an inquiry-based life.” (Meyer 2011) In order to create these conditions for our students, we need to adopt Gadamer’s disposition toward expertise; we must be experienced in order to provide the possibilities for new experiences and not allow our background knowledge and experience to turn our understanding into something we see as finished and complete. We must continually develop our own abilities to see and take care of the topics we teach because it is the way in which we approach these topics, and then take them up in our classrooms that will provide the necessary ‘field of play’ for the puer/senex complex to bear fruit. In short, we need to recognize the need for both the puer and senex within ourselves.
What has been an important discovery for me is the importance how central this notion of topic is to developing meaningful and effective inquiry-based learning experiences, something that is lacking from the emerging frameworks and theories that frequently appear under the banner of 21st Century learning. As our profession begins a slow shift from the factory-model paradigm of content delivery, the dominant models are focused on developing skills and competencies with students. Discussions of how students should be developing critical, creative, collaborative, innovative skills abound. But what is lacking from these frameworks of 21st Century Learning is the importance of what is being learned (Friesen and Jardine, 2009 p. 20) We have already seen how overly student-centered approaches to learning often lead to the puer spirit being given free range to create their own world. We have also seen how important it is to create learning environments that have the place for play between what is known or bounded, and what is possible. This has led me to develop a growing appreciation for the way that a rich topic provides the important boundaries or structures that are needed to create meaningful and engaging classroom work for students, while allowing space and possibility for new creation and imagination.
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