C72: The Relationship between the Learning Environment and Play

​As I was getting ready to record this podcast episode, I accidentally clicked on Google Maps.  It had been so long since I used the app while in Google docs that it showed by location at Al Warqa 2 near Mirdif City Centre in Dubai.  I had to chuckle, because this was my location six and half years ago.  

What does this have to do with the learning environment and play?  If we don’t allow our learners to play with materials and ideas on a regular basis, they will make generalizations that are out of date and not relevant to their current situation.  Just think about that one for a minute.  

This past week during my library restructure in Connecticut, I came across a book that intrigued me that is well worth getting.  It’s called “Classroom Spaces that Work,” by Marlynn K. Clayton and Mary Beth Forton.  It was published back in 2001, which is very much ahead of the time and deals with a lot of the ideas I’ve shared already.  It’s as if this book knew I needed to meander through it to validate my thought processes about responsive classrooms and responsive educators.  

Take a look at this picture.  What do you see?  What is happening in this classroom?

Cooperation versus Collaboration

​As I think of the relationship between the learning environment and play, it reminds of the chicken and the egg argument.  Which one came first?  Do we need a well thought out learning space design to bring about play?  Does play shape the way the learning space is designed?  Hmm…which way do you look at it? 

I think it’s a bit of both.  We can have a lovely learning space design where no play occurs.  Have you seen a classroom like this?  Learners are clustered together in desk sets of 4-6.  They work together to complete tasks.  When you take a deeper dive into the learning situation, you notice that not all learners are working together.  Learners are often engaged in lower level thinking by completing worksheets or tasks that were copied out of a reproducible book.  This is not play or proper collaboration. 

Someone recently shared with me that there is a major difference between cooperation and collaboration.  Cooperation is when people come together.  While collaboration is when a group of people come together with a shared goal to solve a problem or create new ideas.  This is vastly different yet many educators use them synonymously when designing their learning space. Do your learners cooperate or collaborate on a regular basis? 

​This is not the only type of learning space design.  There are classrooms where learners are working together to solve open-ended tasks, but the teacher plans the outcomes and processes.  On the surface, this may look learner driven, but the teacher is always one step ahead of the learners.  If a group comes to a different conclusion than the teacher, there is little or no room for the students to share their perspectives.  

To many, this may seem better than having learners cooperate on group projects.  I think it’s more frustrating for learners.  Imagine being told that you are working on an open-ended project with your team, but there are certain parameters on how it’s solved and how you share your learning.  It appears to the community that learners have a lot of freedom to play with ideas, but this is an illusion.  The teacher is still controlling the process, so learners have very little opportunity to play with ideas on their own.  What a missed opportunity for the learner to demonstrate some agency!

When I think of play, I focus on how to get my learners to collaborate effectively using the design thinking process.  This process shows learners how to value the ideas of each member, define the underlying issue, generate out of the box ideas, prototype, and evaluate the progress.  This is completely different from merely coming together to complete a task. 

Designing Spaces for Collaboration

​Design thinking requires us to take a leap of faith and believe in our student’s abilities to design their own process and product.  This is not easy my friend’s especially since we are the biggest control freaks!  You know it’s true.  

My optimal classroom learning space is fluid.  Learners are able to move about the classroom, use a wide variety of materials to test out ideas, and discuss ideas amongst all the groups and provide feedback. This is how the real world works.  How many times have you walked down the hallway to another teacher’s classroom and they asked for an idea on how to deliver a lesson?  You rattle off some ideas and they are sparked in a new direction.  This happens all the time, yet we don’t allow this to happen for our learners.  

By creating collaborative learning spaces, play truly comes alive.  Over the next few episodes, we will explore the features of play and how it makes you look within your classroom context.  It’s not perfect and it’s more than simply “playing” with manipulatives.  To me, it’s more about playing with ideas at a conceptual level, so learning transfers to new situations.  It’s definitely not easy, but it’s worth the effort.  

Come along the play journey with me my friends and let’s see what we discover along the way.