Learning & Development: Play - Party time

Up to 20,000 visitors are expected to flood into New York's Central Park next month to join in the Ultimate Block Party, a fun, family day out with some serious messages about young children's play and learning and the needs of the 21st century workforce.

Children and their parents will be able to take part in a huge Simon Says, create music in a pots-and-pans band and build a skyscraper at the event on Sunday, 3 October. In all, more than 25 interactive activities will be on offer, spanning curriculum themes such as creativity, science and language and all designed to illustrate the links between play and learning.

'The Ultimate Block Party is a positive response to the crisis of diminishing playtime in childhood,' say the event organisers, a consortium of institutions led by the Center for Reimaging Children's Learning and Education (CiRCLE) at Temple University, Philadelphia.

By educating parents, and the wider community, about children's play, the organisers hope to close the growing the gap between research-based good practice and what actually happens in the classroom.

'There's a huge gap between what we know as scientists and what is happening in the classroom. It is so time to bridge that gap,' says CiRCLE co-director Professor Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, whose idea it was to organise the event.

'We hope to change the lens on how parents think about learning. And when a parent goes home, we hope they will see learning potential in their own backyard. There are educational opportunities all over, not just in books or expensive toys but in the biology of anthills, the physics of swings and in the chemistry of cooking. When parents "get it", we'll create a groundswell.

'And moving that groundswell of interest into classrooms will mandate a change in policy. Learning is not about the memorisation of facts but about engaged understanding - about knowing why as well as what.'

More broadly, the organisers hope the party will help inspire practices that create learners equipped with 21st century skills. 'We're hoping to roll this out not as an event but as a movement,' says Professor Hirsh-Pasek, whose books, including Play = Learning, prepared the groundwork for the party.

21st CENTURY SKILLS

She points to the Alliance for Childhood survey (April 2009) as offering some of the latest evidence of the devaluation of play in America's kindergartens. The survey, which looked at 142 kindergartens in New York and 112 in Los Angeles, found that a quarter of Los Angeles teachers had no time whatsoever in their classrooms for children's free play. In New York, 61 per cent of teachers said children had 30 minutes or less a day of choice time, while 79 per cent said children had 20 minutes a day, or 'test prep'.

'We are wearing out our children by engaging them in these "drill-and-kill" activities and testing for factoids when factoids don't matter,' Professor Hirsh-Pasek told delegates at an Open Eye campaign conference in London in June. 'Our society so often confuses learning with memorisation and test scores with success. Nothing could be more wrong.'

Such an approach to education will leave young children today illprepared for the demands of the 21st workforce, she believes. 'They tell us in the business world that we are leaving the information age and entering the knowledge age, and that innovation and creativity are absolutely key for the world that these children are going to be entering,' she says.

As evidence of the shift, she refers to A Whole New Mind by Daniel H Pink (2005), in which he writes, 'The last few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind - computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys of the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind - creators and empathisers, pattern-recognisers and meaning-makers. These people - artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big-picture thinkers - will now reap society's richest rewards and share its greatest joys.'

In such a world, adds Professor Hirsh-Pasek, information doubles every two and a half years, rendering pointless the current educational focus on acquiring factoids, and placing the emphasis on how we learn rather than what we learn.

PLAYFUL LEARNING

Success in the global workforce of the 21st century will, therefore, require children, Professor Hirsh-Pasek believes, to master what she is calling the six Cs:

Collaboration - to acquire the expanding amount of information needed to do their jobs, tomorrow's workers will have to be good team players, be able to create strong communities, see from one another's perspectives and be able to share

Communication - workers will require not just good speaking skills, but also the ability to listen, the know-how to build a community and a range of communication styles (persuasive, analytical, etc)

Content - content will remain important but the focus should be not just on literacy and maths but also on the arts, science and social sciences

Critical thinking - the capacity to acquire, assess and manage content

Creative innovation - having the ability to find creative solutions

Confidence - the inventors, designers and big-picture thinkers that Daniel Pink talks about will need the ability to 'dream big and dare to fail'.

Professor Hirsh-Pasek believes the six Cs are best developed through 'playful learning', a curriculum offering a combination of free play and guided play - which, in the language of the EYFS, uses 'enabling environments' and 'supportive adults' to edge a child towards making new connections in their learning.

'Playful learning can help children develop the very skills that the business community and government say we want in young children in the future. It is our job as a movement to make this the pedagogy for early childhood education,' she says.

To date, the party has attracted a wide sweep of sponsors and US government agencies, like the National Science Foundation, and the corporate world has expressed interest in its goals.

There are already plans to launch an e-magazine, LEARN, alongside the party, and to stage the party itself nationally and internationally. 'The next one has to be Hyde Park,' says Professor Hirsh-Pasek. 'San Francisco, Chicago, Sydney, Amsterdam have all asked us if we can do one. Everybody is jumping in on it and people are "getting it". As teachers, we've known for so long that what is going on is wrong, and this is a chance to change it.'

More information

• www.ultimateblockparty.org
• Dr Kathyrn Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University, Philadelphia. She recently won the Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the service of science and society. For more information, visit: http://astro.temple.edu/(approx)khirshpa/flash.html
• Open EYE's 'The Freedom To Be Myself' conference DVD is available for £19 post-free from Grethe Hooper Hansen, 16 High Bannerdown, Bath BA1 7JZ; e-mail ghooperhansen@onetel.com; tel: 01225 858211. Discount available for multiple copies. 

PLAY ON

The current political climate and the upcoming EYFS review have reopened the debate about the role of play in children's learning. Professor Hirsh-Pasek has made the case for play in many of her recent books, and many new titles are adding to the discussions.

A Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool: Presenting the Evidence by Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Laura E Berk and Dorothy Singer (OUP USA), provides a strong counter-argument to the rising tide of didactic instruction in pre-school classrooms, a comprehensive review of research supporting playful learning and policy and practice recommendations.

Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth eds Singer, Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek (OUP USA)

Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children Really Learn - And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less by Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (Rodale Press)

Celebrate the Scribble: Appreciating Children's Art by Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (Crayola Beginnings Press)

How Babies Talk: The Magic and Mystery of Language in the First Three Years of Life by Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (Plume Books)

Engaging Play edited by Liz Brooker and Susan Edwards (Open University Press). Scholars from the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States consider, from their own theoretical standpoint, the ways that young children's play contributes to their learning and development.

Thinking About Play edited by Janet Moyles (Open University Press). This collection supports practitioners in reflecting more deeply on their play provision for young children.

The Excellence of Play edited by Janet Moyles (3rd edition, Open University Press), illustrates key play theories in practice and includes ten new chapters that reflect the latest thinking in play and early years curriculum practice.

The Trouble with Play by Susan Grieshaber and Felicity McArdle (Open University Press), argues that play in the early years is not always innocent, fun and natural and, therefore, needs new approaches to pedagogy. (See 'Analysis', Nursery World, 23 September 2010)