Opinion: Taking play seriously

Last month, as chair of TACTYC, I joined a small group of colleagues and play researchers to meet politicians, policy makers and interested organisations in the House of Commons. Our focus was 'Playful learning in educational settings'. Our findings were drawn from a play research, two-day seminar that had been held at LeedsMet in April. A digest of the findings was available to delegates and you can get a copy on the TACTYC website. We were pleased it was a well-attended event and that such discussion was going on in those hallowed halls.

England was once at the forefront of cutting-edge practice in playful learning, but that legacy has been lost in the last 20 years. This is in part because of the rise of teacher-directed activity in response to a prescribed and narrow curriculum. But this loss of heritage has also resulted from the lack of funded research around playful learning in educational settings. Basically, we don't really know a lot about how children learn through play or what they learn and, as a result, we don't have a language or clear frameworks for discussing playful learning.