Playful approaches to learning as a realm for the humanities in the culture of higher education: a hermeneutical literature review

This paper is based on a qualitative, hermeneutical literature review of
playful approaches to teaching and learning, understood in light of
educational culture in higher education. Specifically, the aim of the
literature review was to select, understand and present the literature in
an interplay with a theoretical and practice-oriented perspective on
culture. The paper therefore explores a field that is emerging and
beginning to establish itself. This emerging nature of the field poses
methodological challenges, which the paper briefly describes. By means
of the literature review, we find that playfulness and playful approaches
has the potential to emphasize creativity in learning and human
flourishing in education. This insight, however, leads to several questions
with respect to societal, institutional, and organizational educational
culture, and regarding approaches to teaching, learning, humanity and
society.