Designing for Playful Participation: Pedagogical Strategies in Norway and Denmark

Research topic/aim

This roundtable discussion will in a playful way address the question: How are students engaged to participate in playful teaching designs? – with a particular focus on how engagement is actively fostered through pedagogical choices and design strategies. The discussion draws on insights from teacher and social education programs in Norway and Denmark.

Theoretical framework

The tested teaching designs are, in various ways, rooted in playfulness and operate within the tension between comfort and challenge (Oreskov & Sønnichsen, 2023, Pedersen & Togsverd, 2024), between engagement and performance (Jensen et al., 2021) and between lectures and variation in student-centred teaching (Nørgård et al. 2017).

Methodology/research design

The roundtable is based on four distinct teaching designs, each presented in a separate abstract. The research methods are within a frame of action research (Aagerup, 2022) and self study (Loughran, 2004) with an aim of developing our own teaching and describe the processes of general interests.

Expected results/findings

Each of the four abstracts presented in this roundtable discussion points to preliminary findings related to student engagement in playful teaching designs. Across the cases, early results amongst others, suggest that the students get “caught” in playful activities enhancing their motivation and reducing performance anxiety. It is important to engage the students in the narratives, not primarily the teachers, it is important to encourage the students to show creativity and to develop playful ideas so that their ownership becomes stronger. We also found that playful teaching, rather unexpected for the students, engage and leave the students with experiences of fun and scaffold them to overcome the fear of making mistakes, enabling more open participation. Those are some of the key factors in fostering participation.

Relevance to Nordic educational research

Creative, development of higher professional education seems to be necessary and relevant not only in the Nordic countries but in most of the Western world.


References

Aagerup, L. (2022). Pædagogens undersøgelsesmetoder. Hans Reitzels Forlag. 2. udgave.



Jensen, J. B., Pedersen, O., Lund, O., & Skovbjerg, H. M. (2021). Playful approaches to learning as a realm for the humanities in the culture of higher education: A hermeneutical literature review. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 0(0), 1–22.



Loughran, J. (2004) Learning through self-study: The influence of purpose, participants and context. I J. Loughran, M.L. Hamilton, V.K. LaBoskey & T. Russell (red.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (s. 817–869). Springer.

Nørgård, R. T., Toft-Nielsen, C., & Whitton, N. (2017). Playful learning in higher education: developing a signature pedagogy. International Journal of Play, 6(3), 272–282.

Oreskov, S. W., & Sønnichsen, L. H. (2023). Underviserens arbejde med at skabe deltagelse i undervisning med legekvalitet. Forskning i pædagogers profession og uddannelse, 7(1), 62–69.

Pedersen, O., & Togsverd, L. (2024). Når præstation bliver en leg og leg en præstation. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Pedagogikk Og Kritikk, 10(5).