Undergraduate - UnitEDF4029 - Play in lifelong learning

This unit focuses on the potential of playful activity to enhance the learning process and contribute to development throughout our lifetime. Playfulness allows 'possibility thinking', creative freedom, and intellectual curiosity, all vital characteristics of learning and development at all ages. Throughout this unit, students explore their own playfulness in order to increase confidence and develop their own skills in creating and leading playful learning environments. Students investigate a range of learning contexts to examine the presence and absence of playful activity, critically challenging common assumptions of who, how, where and when people play and how this affects their learning and development. Students draw upon insights from their own research, along with critical analysis of contemporary theoretical perspectives of play, to formulate personal theorisations of the role of play in both teaching and learning. They investigate and design new pedagogical and research-based approaches to playful learning with an emphasis on diverse learning contexts.