"There is No Evidence That Children Learn Through Play"

An early childhood educator recently told me that if "playwork" was a viable career option in the US, that she would have pursued that rather than "play-based preschool teacher."

I get it. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to work with and alongside several highly regarded play workers in the US, Europe, and Australia. I've always felt a strong affinity for their way of working with children, far more so, in fact, than I do with most "preschool teachers."

If you're not familiar -- and if you're in the US, you might not be -- playwork emerged from the adventure playground movement, beginning with Denmark's Emdrup "junk playground" in 1943. It spread to postwar Britain, most notably through the work of Lady Marjory Allen. Playwork is explicitly not about educating children. It is about respecting children enough to create and protect spaces for freely chosen, child-directed play with as little adult intervention as possible. Today, especially in Britain, it has evolved into a distinct profession and philosophy.

Play-based learning has a longer pedigree, with its roots in the work of Friedrick Fröbel, who created kindergarten in the 19th century around the idea that play is central to children's development and learning. This concept was later picked up by such thinkers as John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky who connected children's active exploration and play with intellectual and social development. 

Obviously, there is a great deal of cross-over, but there is one significant difference. As one crotchety play worker once said to me after listening to a talk I gave at a conference: "There is no evidence that children learn through play." Not only are those "fightin'" words, but  it's empirically not true. There is plenty of evidence that children learn through play.

At the same time, I feel like I know what he means, even if I object to the specific thing he said. He was raising a philosophical objection disguised as an empirical one. Playwork Principles say that the play process is paramount and that the role of a playworker is to guard against adult agendas that disrupt the process. I don't think this playworker doubts that children learn through their play, but rather he sees an adult agenda in the word "learning" and, in my experience, he's not wrong about that.

Throughout my decades working with young children, I've experienced, time and again, adult agendas disrupting play. I've seen well-intended adults unilaterally solve "problems," not allow children to struggle, pepper them with questions, and simply take-over the play. The adult agendas of efficiency, conflict resolution, schedules, learning, and adult-direction, are all play disruptors. I felt like my main job as the "teacher" of our cooperative preschool was teaching the adults how to get out of the way and simply be amazed by what they witness.

I suspect that the main thing about play-based learning that rubs playworkers the wrong way is that instead of approaching childhood play as a "pure good," they see us as subordinating play to the adult agenda of "learning."

And that definitely happens in many, maybe even most, play-based environments. There's a lot of talk, for instance, about "making the learning visible," and "scaffolding" the play, and (the phrase that really gets my goat) "guided play." Some of us do it because, frankly, we don't, deep down, trust play, and by extension, we don't trust young children. Some of us do it because we have an agenda (self-imposed or imposed from above) of what the children are supposed to learn and by when. Some of us do it because we see ourselves as "teachers" and that's what teachers do. Others do it because parents are watching and when we "loiter with intent" we worry it looks like we're not doing anything at all.

When children play, really play, learning has nothing to do with it. Not from their perspective. They are learning, of course, but the process of play is the only thing that matters to the people who matter. When adult's enact their agendas they are making it about themselves, their needs, wants, and fears.

I call what I do play-based learning for one reason: marketing. It's strategic language. I find myself "selling" play into a culture that believes, cruelly, that children, even very young ones, must always be producing something that can be measured. "Just let them play" doesn't sell because it sounds too much like nothing is happening. When I say "they're leaning through play" it reassures adults enough to, I hope, leave the children alone. 

The playworker critique applies far more devastatingly to academic-style schooling. We know children are learning something in those schools, but we have no idea what any given child will learn. Ever. We can know what being is taught. We know what they can reproduce on demand (testing). We might even know what they can recall a week later. But learning itself is always largely invisible and wildly idiosyncratic. School children can sit through the same lesson and learn entirely different things. One learns long division. Another learns that they're bad at math. Another learns that adults become irritated by certain questions. Another learns how to cheat without being caught. Another that they must sit still and quiet. Yet the test only asks about long division.

So perhaps the intellectually honest claim isn't "Children learn through play," but rather, "Children are always learning. Play simply gives adults less control over what." And maybe that's what bothers everyone.

Play is what children do when left to their own devices. It's how humans have evolved to spend large swathes of their early years. Adult agendas tend to rob children of their right, their need, to explore, manipulate, and live in the world. All mammals, birds, and even reptiles play when they are young. Some have even found evidence of what could be called play in invertebrates and even, stretching things, plants. The leading theory for play's existence is that it is how young animals practice for the future, which is to say learn in order to survive and thrive.

We are at our best as play-based "educators" when we create beautiful spaces in which children know they have permission to play. The learning, whatever that entails, is none of our business.

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