Conference Proposal: Learning through Play and Imagination

Villanova University, Villanova PA

Investigators

Abstract

Many researchers have claimed that playful and imaginative activities lead to learning in childhood. But this claim is deceptively simple, and it leaves open a host of critical questions about how (and even whether) play and imagination can effectively promote learning. These questions include: How, exactly, does the process of playful learning work? Which dimensions of play sessions or imagined scenarios are particularly effective for children's learning, and why? Which topics do children learn most readily through playful and imaginative activities, and at what ages? How do characteristics of individual children (e.g., executive function, temperament) interact with the process of learning through play and imagination? Integrating information and and answering these questions are important for the implications they hold for educators and media creators . To stimulate cross-disciplinary discussions, this two-day conference (co-sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development) aims to identify and fill gaps in the literature on children's learning from playful and imaginative activities, build collaborations across labs and subdisciplines on open research questions, and produce proposals for evidence-based strategies for how these activities can best be used to enhance children's learning and development. By combining traditional talks with interactive activities, and by actively seeking participants both from academic disciplines and practice fields (e.g., media creation, playground and toy design), this conference will give participants a wide view research in learning in and through play and imagination, delve into best practices, and explicitly encourage collaborations and planning for future work to answer crucial open questions in this field. Participants will leave the conference with shard conceptualizations of imaginative and playful learning and the ways it could be researched and applied. The results of these conversations will be widely disseminated through blog posts, open-access papers, and publicly available pamphlets. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.