Playwheel – a didactic tool for playful teaching Jakob Ørsted, visual artist and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen’s Early Childhood and Social Education programme & Maja Laybourn, cand.mag. (Master of Arts) and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen’s Teacher Education programme
How do you make the teaching more playful, creative and experimental without losing focus on the curriculum that the students need to learn? The group of ambassadors at University College Copenhagen have developed Playwheel – a didactic tool that can inspire educators on the teacher education and social education programmes to initiate learning processes that are playful, investigative and creative, without compromising on the content of the subjects taught.
Playful teaching – how do you ensure educational standards? In this article, we present Playwheel as a didactic tool and examine how it can contribute to the initiation of experiments and provide a framework for playful teaching. Engaging in playful, creative and experimental learning processes with students can sound both enticing and discouraging. For what didactic principles can you apply to teaching that favour the freedom of play and unpredictability while ensuring educational standards and that you meet learning outcomes? Playful qualities in the teaching can contribute to activating and motivating the students in connection with the teaching, and give them didactic and pedagogical perspectives on the relationship between play and learning.
Spinning of Playwheel in PlayLab Enthusiastic outbursts are heard in the new PlayLab at University College Copenhagen. Several student pedagogues are trying the roller coaster, while others are curiously examining the materials in the room. Suddenly, a frisbee flies through the air, followed by several balls.
In the following, we describe what Playwheel is and how educators from the Early Childhood and Social Education programme and the Teacher Education programme, respectively, use it in different ways to experiment with their teaching. In the article, we examine how didactics are challenged by playful approaches, but also how the curriculum can be learnt in connection with the teaching through the use of teaching methods containing playful qualities. The article is based on the educator’s organisation of a playful teaching practice and how Playwheel can be used in this context.
This is what it looks like when a class of student pedagogues enthusiastically try out PlayLab, some of them in an almost euphoric mood. However, this does not apply to the educator, for whom the situation is unfamiliar. She is also part of a didactic experiment in which she will let go of her control and give the students room and opportunity to (re)train their play competences. After 15 minutes of free play, the class gathers at the wall in front of a large rotating version of Playwheel.
2020/2021
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