Play and the Possibility of Flourishing in ECEC: Emerging Insights from the Danish Research Project TRoLD (Trivsel og leg i dagtilbud)

This symposium present aspects of the research project TROLD to discuss coherences and challenges around flourishing and play in Danish ECEC. TRoLD is a four-year project that investigates how children, pedagogues and researchers can collaborate to make knowledge about connections between flourishing and play participation in ECEC. Theoretically, the project draws on a pedagogical paradigm of flourishing (Kristjansson 2025) and on theory of play as a mood practice (Karoff, 2013). Methodologically we emphasise relations between materials, surroundings and people through design-based-research-processes (Barab & Squire, 2016) and by using play experiments (Jørgensen, 2023) and sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015) as the motor for empirical data creation.
In this session, we aim to discuss children’s and pedagogues’ perspectives on flourishing and play by exploring questions related to the meaning of flourishing within Nordic pedagogical contexts
Possibilities and challenges for pedagogues supporting floruishing and play in ECEC
The role of courage in both play and the pedagogical profession
The idea of world-centredness as possible dimension of play and flourishing