Being Play Responsive Lies at the Heart of the Original Learning Approach

A paper I wrote to submit to a book, then backed out because I was unsure of my voice with this more academic tone

Introduction

The Original Learning Approach (OLA) started as a personal space to explore how play, learning and teaching are interwoven and enhance each other. I have continued my exploration of Original Learning within an Indigenous paradigm (Kuokkanen, 2000) focusing on practical knowledge and storytelling more than theoretical knowings to avoid, as much as possible, the colonising effects of academia. By striving to apply my reflections practically in my work, as an early years educator, the term play-responsive educator came into being as my teaching was in response to the children’s play.

I discovered that I was not alone in my use of the term play-responsive, Pramling and Wallerstedt (2019), among others, also use play-responsive but differently, as the educator plays alongside and with the child and scaffolds the play as a “play equal”. While this might happen in the facilitator part of my interpretation of the term, the major part of being play-responsive is the ability to notice how, why, when and what the children play to inform responses as an educator. The teaching part of being play-responsive leans towards scaffolding the children with the skills and knowledge they need to extend their own play, with the trust that in autonomous play children are in a state of flow as their brain rewards them with endorphins to be able to adapt to a complex world (Axelsson, 2023a).

OLA has evolved during the last decade through the analysis of pedagogical documentation whilst learning and developing how to work philosophically with preschoolers; focusing on creating inclusive, democratic spaces so all children can participate in response to the education system failing to meet the needs of my own neurodivergent children; examining how to be more sustainable as a reaction to my children becoming climate activists; being inspired by the Reggio Emilia Approach and Anji Play; reading and learning from Indigenous methodologies and decolonising approaches to education and life; and studying playwork, an opportunity to examine play beyond the pedagogical lens of early childhood education.

Indigenous methodologies lead me to walking the land (Hamm, 2015) in order to embody knowledge and practice.  Liisa-Ravna Finbog (2020) writes about  "mahttu" (practical knowledge) and  "diehtu" (theoretical knowledge) and how they are learned through listening, observing as well as being and doing. I have understood her texts as that diehtu is learning about things, while mahttu is getting to know things, and that we have a need for both in order to create a more complete and rich knowledge. Knowledges (deliberately plural) are both process and product according to Finbog (2020) which results in a greater freedom to evolve and adjust in order to remain relevant; and that they are collective knowledges that do not belong to individuals, thus making academic individual ownership of knowledge (singular) out of tune with the storytelling traditions of knowledge transfer in Indigenous communities (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Spaulding, 2010; Windchief & San Pedro, 2019). By building a relationship with the forest, I learned to recognise how it feels in my body when I am open to observe and notice, and when my own thoughts, fears and bias prevent full awareness. This was transferable to my work with young children of being aware when I was being open to notice how they play and learn in order to respond appropriately as an educator.

The philosophy with children created a community of learners where a more collective approach to exploring, testing and creating knowledge and understanding was formed. The complexity of play, teaching and learning became apparent as the teacher led activities were about the skills needed to actively participate democratically in philosophical dialogues - listening to understand, self-regulation, ability to express opinions and ask questions. I noticed that the children were using these skills in their play resulting in less need for adult interventions and more respect for a wide diversity of play experiences. The philosophy with children sessions also provided an opportunity to practise as an adult to listen to the children and facilitate their dialogue which improved skills as a play-responsive educator which empowered the children during the taught activities enhancing the sense of autonomy; which research shows is essential for well-being (Sando et al, 2021). Bae (2009, 2012) illustrates empirically how children’s rights to participate in early childhood education rely on relationships, going beyond offering individuals choices but the need to create a togetherness, and that in play children practise their democratic rights to express their thoughts and opinions. In OLA the aim is to provide opportunities for the children to develop and practise the skills they need to participate democratically.

Playwork has allowed me to understand the need for play not to be used as a tool for teaching, but as inspiration. The moment we view play as a pedagogical tool changes the way we see it and the kind of play that children can access or have permission to engage in. 

As an autistic mother of autistic children I am acutely aware of how the education system frequently fails to create safe and brave spaces for all children. My observations of my children, especially my youngest, made me realise that he needed to play much longer than what the education system allowed him; and I am sure that if he had been allowed to play his brain would have been ready not only to learn, but to actively seek out knowledge. Original Learning aims to provide an educational approach that embraces all children’s play needs and hopes to create a learning flow that could possibly feel as motivating, inspiring and as thrilling as play.

Method

For the purpose of this paper I decided to review the literature to see how OLA is in line with academic research. As guiding words to seek out relevant research I used; play, play-based, learning through play, early childhood education, and decolonising play. To narrow down the search I sought out articles and books written by women, BIPoC communities and people living/coming from beyond the global north. The aim was not to be exclusive in this selection but to ensure that I am not perpetuating the single story (Adichie, 2009) that has ignored and silenced the histories and knowledges of others and the othered.

Results/The Story 

Play

In play children have the opportunity to experience real life, experiences and challenges and develop the opportunity to understand the possibilities and limits of the world (Voce 2008; Norén-Björn 2016). In my own experience, play is much more than learning about possibilities and limits, it is a state of well-being through a sense of autonomy as well as engaging in joyful activities that inspire, energise, soothe the soul - or whatever the play provides. 

“In play, children are agents. They are doers... If we are to unleash children’s infinite potential, not only do we have a responsibility to position play as a right, we must also understand the agency children need to have during play” ( Souto-Manning 2017 p.786). But I think that not all play is doing, sometimes it is being; and I realise that much of my own childhood play, hours of daydreaming in a safe and comfortable place, might not be considered play in a normative interpretation; yet it was an essential play form for my autistic brain in order to take part and thrive in normatively perceived descriptions of play.

The role of play, as an essential component of child development, is recognized internationally (Gomes & Fleer, 2019; Howes & Smith 1995; Norðdahl & Jóhannesson, 2016; Pellegrini & Nathan, 2011; Weldemariam 2014). Yet despite it being a fundamental component the International Play Association (IPA, 2010) has shared there is a lack of children’s play globally due to “excessive pressure for educational achievement” (p. 38) and a lack of parental “awareness of the importance of play in children’s holistic development” (p. 27). 

Play, learning and teaching are interwoven in OLA, rooted in the understanding that children’s play has long been recognised in research as essential to their learning and development (Akman & Özgül, 2015; Bonawitz, et al., 2011; Nayfield et al., 2011; Ross, 2013), that play should be central to early childhood education (Akman & Özgül, 2015; Bergen, 2009; Bulunuz, 2013; Cook et al., 2011; Larimore, 2020) and that some research suggests that children’s learning skills are better developed through exploratory and self-directed play than through direct instruction (Bonawitz et al., 2011; Bulunuz 2013).There are many countries that emphasise the explicit link between play and learning, rather than play v learning, especially in the early years (Rentzou et al., 2019) and the terms “learning through play” or “play-based learning” have become the central pedagogy for their early childhood education (Bubikova-Moan et al., 2019). This is not without its problems as “play-based” settings can have notable differences in the space, materials, pedagogies and attitudes of the adults depending on the location (Miller & Saenz, 2021) as it is the adult interpreting how play is the base of their teaching and the play often becomes manipulated into a teaching tool and risks no longer being able to be defined as autonomous play recognised by the presence of both joy and choice (Axelsson, 2023a).

OLA strives to create a space for play that does not devalue the importance of teaching, but seeks to calm the excessive academic pressures so that we can create schools where understanding is prioritised rather than memorisation of facts to pass a test that are subsequently forgotten to memorise for the next test (Axelsson, 2023b). 

The United Nations Rights of the Child, article 31 explicitly states that play is the right of all children (1989), along with leisure and rest. The question is whether there is sufficient autonomous play in the lives of children to support their well-being and to ensure article 31 is being upheld. How often do we actually take the time to do a play audit? To account for how much play time, space and variety children can access and engage in?

In dialogues and interviews with English playworker Penny Wilson she used the term “play literacy” multiple times and we decided together to define this term for extra clarity for my Swedish book on risky play. 

Play literacy is our ability to read, interpret, sense, and understand the essence of play; and an ability to communicate in a common language about play. It is a set of skills and knowledge needed to recognize play, know when to interact and intervene, and how to avoid interference. It is the ability to evaluate and analyse play in order to provide credible and meaningful information about it to others, and to be able to design and sustain an environment in which play is given time, space and validation. It is also recognizing that the essence of play can, and should, be found in everyday experiences.

Being play literate is vital for OLA play-responsive educators, because if we fail to be able to recognise play and beyond-normative play, as well as dealing with personal fears and bias, our ability to respond as educators is severely hampered. Becoming familiar with play flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) informs how we can create environments that are conducive to learning flow. 

An overemphasis on children possessing “school ready” skills and turning to primary

school teaching methods are leading to the ‘schoolification’ of some preschools worldwide (Gunnersdottir, 2004). Consequently, an increasing number of young children experience stress and have little time for play, rest and leisure (Bach & Christensen, 2017; Ebbeck & Chan, 2011). This might be due to not realising that the holistic development of young children is important for future school, work and life (Bach & Christensen, 2017; Tan, 2017, Ducusin & Dy, 2016) and also due to the fact that defining exactly what play is, and is not, both precisely and concisely is difficult (Whitebread et al., 2012).

Play offers choice and joy through being pleasurable, voluntary, spontaneous, engaging and intrinsically motivating (Bullard, 2017) and contributes to children’s happiness and mental well-being (Fisher, 2008), it also offers children opportunities to:

• engage in multiple ways to explore, construct, engage in literacy etc. which could involve the use of toys, books, blocks or other materials (Bullard, 2017; Fisher, 2008). 

• be alone (solitary play) or with others (parallel, associative or cooperative play) (Bullard, 2017; Fisher, 2008).

• build social skills, learn values and emotional intelligence (Yongbeom & Fung, 2021)

• reduce stress (Wang & Aamodt, 2012) 

• develop physically - muscle strength, bone density, balance, dexterity etc (Sherar &Cumming, 2022. Gavrilova et al, 2022; Sando et al 2021), and much more.

Defining play remains uncertain Colliver & Doel-Mackaway (2021, p.573) identified “three universal findings from research with young children over the last 31 years: child choice, lack of adult control, and peer inclusion”. I believe the word control is central, children’s play can thrive with adults who do not seek control but seek to participate in the play. My own definition of play is simply choice and joy, as an attempt to move beyond normative interpretations of play. A child can play alone or together with others as long as it brings joy, I have witnessed too many children struggle because they are being coerced into social play in an attempt to include them, when really, inclusion would have been to allow them to parallel play or play elsewhere. Children coerced into a play situation are not at play they are acting play and it is vital as educators we learn the difference between children who are genuinely at play and those who are acting in order to fit in. As an autistic person and mother of three autistic children I can speak from experience that fitting in is not the same as inclusion rooted in belonging.

Ten Essential Threads

I have imagined Original Learning like a loom, where the warp threads are play and the weft threads are learning and teaching. While play can occur in the weft threads, and learning can occur in the warp threads, teaching cannot occur in the warp threads as the thread will mutate to non-play. The interweaving of play, learning and teaching is what creates the fabric of life, and in life-fabrics we want a high thread count. It makes no difference how many teaching threads are woven, if the warp threads are far and few between the fabric will be full of holes, less stable and resilient. In this sense play is seen as an integral part of learning and teaching (Axelsson, 2023a)

The purpose with the ten essential threads is that if educators weave all these into the learning environments and activities the teaching can come closer to the brain at play - a state of flow, but this time a learning flow. The ten essential threads are - wonder, curiosity, joy, knowledge, imagination, interaction, risk, time, reflection and listening. Creating space and permission for flow - whether it be play or learning - is at the heart of the Original Learning Approach, and maybe by using the phrase pedagogy of joy rather than play-based pedagogy/learning we could, possibly, avoid the threat of pedagogical agendas encroaching children’s vital need of play. 

I see the essential thread of joy being created by the trinity of love, well-being and equity; without these being in place experiencing joy becomes harder to achieve as a child will struggle to feel safe and brave. A sense of belonging and togetherness can be created by play-responsive educators that know when to participate in the play in order to scaffold a sense of joy (love, well-being and equity) and when to hold back when the joy thread weaves its magic. Hakkarainen et al. (2013) conclude in their study of  the function of adults supporting children’s play using the tool of a play-world model (see also, Fleer, 2021; Lindqvist, 1995, 2001), where an imaginary world is co-created by the adults and children in order to dramatically explore an ongoing project, that it was not only important to expand the children’s play repertoire but also to build a sense of togetherness. Pramling and Wallerstedt (2019) also write about the importance of educators scaffolding play and the learning happening therein, and encourage educators to respond spontaneously in the moment of play. This is something I am personally apprehensive about, how are pedagogical agendas compatible with the flow of play? Is this approach giving adults permission to control play rather than giving children permission to access more play? Scaffolding children’s play has its benefits, as the included research shows, but in the OLA this playing with is viewed as a facilitator role, and while it is not a lesson being taught, it is teaching and therefore not play. Joyful learning can come close to a sense of play.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) writes about eight main components of joy from a phenomenological perspective. He explains that positive experiences will include one or all of the following components, and often it is a combination that creates a deep sense of joy. The components are 

1. Participating in activities where the possibility to succeed is likely (risk thread)

2. An ability to focus (curiosity and listening threads)

3. The activity has clear goals (knowledge and imagination threads)

4. There is immediate feedback - from the play, others that participate, emotions  etc. (interaction thread)

5. There is a deep sense of engagement that makes it possible to forget everyday worries (play, joy  and wonder  threads)

6. There is a sense of autonomy (play threads)

7. Being able to let go of a sense of self while at the same time developing a deeper sense of self-knowledge afterwards (play threads, knowledge and reflection threads), and

8. An altered state of time is experienced (time and joy threads).

Over the years of my teaching I shifted my focus from interest-led to wonder-led as I noticed that it was easier to create a sense of curious community over a shared wonder that we explored together from the various interests and knowledges in the group of children. The project took a back seat for play to drive us on our learning journeys. Play helped to enhance their confidence, curiosity and imagination (Makovichuk et al., 2014) so it made sense that a deeper level of understanding could be achieved for every child if play is the driving force. This resulted in the children having much more power over the direction of the projects than previously, when the project content and the interest of some of the children directed the teaching and the setting up of the pedagogical environment. Instead the play-ecosystem was curated for the children to explore the project through play and inform me as to what new materials, experiences, literature, knowledge and skills the children required to continue their meaning-making, sense-making and world-making.

Creativity comes from our imagination and Vygotsky (1990) saw creativity as the reformulation of a child's learning in a new and imaginative perspective, enriching the learner's knowledge; play being a perfect opportunity to rework what we have been learning together, implying that setting time aside for children’s autonomous play is an essential part of understanding. It is easy to decide when one wants to learn something, it is impossible to decide exactly when one will understand it (Axelsson 2023a). 

By focusing on curating the environment for play, and scaffolding the skills children need to learn, interact and make risk assessments we can create an ecosystem where creativity can flourish (Plucker & Beghetto 2004). Many of the skills that I facilitated included flexibility, fluency, elaboration and self regulation which can be found in Bloomberg’s (1973) definition of creativity as a set of divergent thinking skills. I discovered philosophy with children scaffolded children’s ability to imagine together, communicate and sustain their play. 

The philosophy with children dialogues created a space where children could narrate their ideas and create meaning collectively. These dialogues were facilitated by an adult, but the direction and content was driven by the children. We developed our own style of philosophy with preschoolers as there was no literature or advice for the 1-3 year old children we started with. The children themselves were the agents and it was their intentions that fuelled the direction of the dialogue. I found Lundy’s (2007) proposed model for conceptualising Article 12 (OHCHR 1990) using four key elements: space, voice, audience and influence, useful when exploring how our philosophy dialogues upheld our responsibility to the children to access their rights.

• Space - the philosophy circles provided opportunities for children to express their opinions and thoughts

• Voice - the facilitator scaffolded the children’s ability to express their views to others

• Audience - both children and adults listened to the perspectives. As the philosophy circle was a space for the children, and adults did not share opinions, it became a safe and brave place for the children to feel heard. 

• Influence - the opinions and ideas that were put forth in the dialogues became the fuel for activities, books and explorations. The children could noticeably see that their ideas impacted the teaching and the play ecosystem.

The essential thread of listening worked its magic throughout the entire loom of OLA. By focusing on the skills needed to be able to listen to understand the power balance shifted in the group. No longer did the children need adults to solve the problem of “they’re not listening to me” because the children valued being listened to, understood that to receive that value they must also give it to others, and possessed the skills needed as a budding effective listener - self-regulation, curiosity, empathy, critical thinking, attention and plenty of time to practise them  (Covey, 1989; Bostrom, 1990; Brody, 2004). Teacher-led games and activities provided the opportunities to hone these skills, but it was in their play where I could see that they understood the relationship between these skills and being able to sustain their own play for ever longer periods of time without the need of a facilitator.

Teacher, Facilitator and Playworker

The OLA educator has three roles to play; that of playworker, facilitator and teacher. As playworker it is the play that is being supported and the pedagogical lens is lifted in order to fully comprehend the complexity that unfolds. Playworker Penny Wilson (2019) writes that the role of the playworker is not to teach how children to play, or to let them play whatever they want, but about  “... creat(ing) playful environments, support(ing) children’s own play, assess(ing) risk, and help(ing) out when needed, without directing or controlling. They (playworkers) strive to be as invisible as possible.” (p.3)

 In early years settings play is commonly seen through a pedagogical lens and the teacher uses play as a tool, resulting in children being encouraged to explore, express and make their own choices within meaningful, engaging contexts, utilising their physical and intellectual capacities, and their social-emotional abilities (Bergen & Fromberg, 2010; Bullard, 2017, Fisher, 2008; Howard, 2010); often, though, this encouragement results in a limitation of how the children are expected to play, how the play is being observed, and understood and also far too often from a normative perspective (Bonawitz et al 2011). Such pedagogically guided play is sometimes called purposeful play (Ministry of Education -Singapore, 2012) but OLA would not consider this as play but rather label it as joyful learning experiences, as not all the children are free: 

• to choose whether or not to participate

• to choose their actions - as there are adult and pedagogical expectations,  

• to leave the activity/exploration when they choose. 

In play-based settings the adult prepares the space, materials and activities, and asks questions in order for the children to reach intended targets (Peterson et al., 2017; Pyle et al., 2018; Pyle et al., 2020; Toub et al., 2016) indicating the play is being manipulated for a pedagogical purpose - in other words the pedagogy is informing the play. In OLA it is the play that informs the pedagogy and this is why the playworker role is so important to understand the play in order to design and sustain an environment where all children feel safe and brave to play and ultimately learn when it comes to the teacher-led activities.

As a facilitator the roles of playworker and educator combine in order to provide the scaffolding children need to sustain their own play (Vygotsky, 1978), and to be able to play democratically. What I have found essential over the last ten years of EY practice is that I do not divide the day up for the children into lessons, play and guidance but think deeply about what role I am playing and to be mindful of how that impacts the children’s autonomy. The facilitator can also play with the children, as an equal within the play (despite the obvious power differences due to age, height, strength and cognition). This brings with it the risk of the play being hijacked for pedagogical purposes, or adults over-controlling the actions; but if done well it can scaffold a more inclusive play, support language that some children need in their play, decode the play for those struggling and to build the trusting relationships needed in safe and brave play/learning environments.

Mroz and Woolner (2020), Nicholson et al. (2014) and Colliver and Doel-Mackaway (2021) have researched adults playing with children and have found that the children 

• enjoy when adults play with them, 

• consider that they do not play often enough.

Their research showed a need for adults to understand their power and ensure that their participation does not interfere with the children’s autonomy, and that it is perfectly possible to play with children while at the same time scaffolding the children’s ability to make choices, participate and express freely. This indicates that children’s play is not dependent on being adult-free, but on adults being sensitive to how children access, participate and express freely in play. When facilitating, there is a need to acknowledge that this is most likely not play, because of our own inability to lose our adult agenda, and is instead joyful learning, which can be valuable but should not replace the actual play.

My role as teacher was, timewise, the shortest that interacted with the children. During this time I provided opportunities to access knowledge the children were seeking in their play, activities for them to practise the skills they needed to sustain their play, and to expose them to new ideas, experiences and possibilities to inspire their play. Examining the documentation as an OLA play-responsive educator what I notice is that much of my teaching was about scaffolding the children’s ability to listen to each other, self regulate, understand their own limits and the limits of others in order to give consent and respect consent to maintain healthy relationships, to consider multiple perspectives, to feel safe, brave and resilient and nurturing their sense of curiosity and wonder. I was fortunate to work with the same children for four years and the trust and professional love (Page 2018) created a social space where play, learning and teaching flowed as many of my play-responsive lessons were so in tune with how the children played that they more often than not the children transformed the activity into their play and at that stage I slipped out of teacher role and into facilitator role and sometimes into playworker role when the play was in full flow. My analysis of these moments was that learning flow and play flow can feel equally joyful, meaningful and powerful when allowed to be autonomous. I also observed that some children would enter a state of play and require my role as playworker, while others maintained their learning flow and sought me out as facilitator; so there were times when I simultaneously played multiple roles.

These three roles are about supporting the agency of the children and creating a democratic space for play and learning. Often the educator is seen as someone that prevents children’s agency, but there is research (Lagerlöf et al, 2019, Colliver & Doel-Mackaway, 2021) indicating that agency does not naturally develop but requires scaffolding and that educators that are sensitive to play are central to the development of children’s agency and ability to participate and knowledge of their rights. By adopting the three roles of OLA we can contribute towards empowering children without compromising on the role of teacher as education provider.

Decolonising Play and Education

As I studied playwork I felt that many of the definitions of play felt too normative, colonised by white, Western, male, able researchers and thinkers and thus limiting how play can be fully appreciated. I am not alone in my consideration of both play and teaching being a colonised (Nxumalo & Mncube, 2019; Rabello de Castro, 2019; Trammell, 2022; ) The threads we weave into the loom of Original Learning need to be examined, so that we offer a wider variety of threads than the usual normative ones provided in a curriculum and the context we live in. We also need to examine if there are any harmful, stereotyped and prejudiced threads that need removing from the basket of threads we usually provide (Axelsson 2023a). The seven principles of Indigenous methodology (Archibald et al. 2019) have provided me with another perspective to consider play and learning.

Respect: respecting the right and biological need to play for all children; respecting all cultures of play.

Reverence: the holding of rituals and ceremonies that invites participation and the weaving of wonder and the extraordinary into our everyday. This can be as simple as a story, a song, the sharing of fruit, or manifest as adults honouring play.

Reciprocity: scaffolding reciprocal relationships to create a community of inclusion where everyone is valued.

Responsibility: providing opportunities for children to gain the experience they need to take responsibility within their capacity.

Holism: the interweaving of mind, body, actions, intellect as well as relationships with families, communities, land etc

Interrelatedness: the historical, political, social and cultural contexts influence each other and our understanding of play, learning and teaching. They also impact the way we view ourselves and others.

Synergy: understanding the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and how play, learning and teaching together create something greater than just teaching alone.

(Axelsson, 2023a)

This requires us as educators to reflect deeply and intersectionally on play and learning and how we can support all children to access their right to play; to engage in daily rituals with the children and be open to the wonders of the world; to imagine an inclusive play and learning community and develop strategies to practically achieve this; to consider the adult impact on children’s play and learning flow and the play-ecosystem and to adjust attitudes to avoid interference; to take time to understand explicit and implicit bias, stereotypes and prejudices in our local context and how to actively counteract them as well as support those negatively affected by them; and to appreciate the rich complexity of play, looking beyond the normative and revelling in it’s multiplicity.

The play-ecosystem as an idea came about from a personal need to examine the complexity of play entangled with the context, teaching, the human participants and the more than human, and evolved into arboreal methodologies (Osgood & Axelsson, 2023) where I routinely walked in the same forest in order to build a relationship and listen to what the forest ecosystem could teach me. Many stories unfolded, but at the root of walking the land (Hamm, 2015) was my ability to slow down, be open and notice, and understand exactly how that felt so that it could be applied to my work with young children. Slowing down didn’t mean I was always being slow but rather peeling back the stress, the bias and learning to be unhurried (Clark, 2022) to be capable of noticing what was really going on rather than my presumptions leading the way. Instead my assumptions, rooted in my theoretical/diehtu and practical/mahttu knowledge (Finbog, 2020) guide my reflections and analysis. 

Just as I learned from my walks that planting trees in lines does not make a forest, because trees are only one part of the ecosystem, I have learned that seating children in rows does not make learning more efficient, because the teaching is just one part of the ecosystem. We need to cultivate the entire play-ecosystem if we want learning to bloom.

Conclusion and Discussion

Reading the research I have come to the conclusion that there is adequate evidence to indicate that OLA can have a positive impact on children’s well-being and cognitive, social, and emotional development, and if I was to dig deeper in to all ten of the essential threads, for which there was neither time nor space to do so in this article, I feel certain I will find yet more evidence supporting the complex and holistic approach OLA has towards education, where play has a vital role.

OLA was conceptualised within my work as an early years educator, but I hope that it can also be used in schools. There are few that dispute that play is fundamental in the early years and is integral to learning, yet, in primary schools teaching ever larger groups  has become the foundation of learning instead, and play becomes something that is permitted as a break from the learning (Dahlberg & Taguchi, 1994; Einarsdóttir et al., 2008). This shift in the way we teach seems to be pushing down on the early years where the idea of school readiness is often interpreted as the children need to learn to read and write before starting school, and ensuring they can sit still and quietly to listen to the teacher. School readiness should be about children’s ability to self-regulate and their sense of well-being to avoid reactions such as anxiety and negative attitudes towards school impacting their ability to learn and socially interact or even attend school (Graue, 2006; Ladd & Price, 1987) or maybe, even better that the school is ready to scaffold the multiple learning journeys. 

Smirnova pointed out (in Veraksa et al, 2020) that play is being replaced by play-based learning tools and that there is a need for play-sensitive research tools to better understand the complexities of play. Being OLA play-responsive could provide an antidote to play being used as a teaching tool, because the play is informing the teaching rather than the teaching informing the play. I also believe there is a need to  examine play beyond normative interpretations. Listening carefully to how children interpret play could be one of many ways that we can peel back what has most often been white male able adult definitions. 

• Are children actually being included and recognised as knowledge-bearers of play? 

• Do children have agency to contribute to the development of play?  and 

• Are adults sensitive enough to know how to be visibly invisible (Axelsson 2023a, 2023b) in order to teach, and scaffold when necessary, as well as avoiding interfering in the children’s flow?

The Original Learning Approach seeks to provide a space to discover the answers to these questions and many others both practically and theoretically .

References in the comments

The Autonomous Child by AI