Educational technology adoption is more widespread than ever in the wake of COVID-19, as corporations have commodified student engagement in makeshift packages marketed as gamification. This book seeks to create a space for playful learning in higher education, asserting the need for a pedagogy of care and engagement as well as collaboration with students to help us reimagine education outside of prescriptive educational technology. Virtual learning has turned the course management system into the classroom, and business platforms for streaming video have become awkward substitutions for lecture and discussion. Gaming, once heralded as a potential tool for rethinking our relationship with educational technology, is now inextricably linked in our collective understanding to challenges of misogyny, white supremacy, and the circulation of misinformation. The initial promise of games-based learning seems to linger only as gamification, a form of structuring that creates mechanisms and incentives but limits opportunity for play. As higher education teeters on the brink of unprecedented crisis, this book proclaims the urgent need to find a space for playful learning and to find new inspiration in the platforms and interventions of personal gaming, and in turn restructure the corporatized, surveilling classroom of a gamified world. Through an in-depth analysis of the challenges and opportunities presented by pandemic pedagogy, this book reveals the conditions that led to the widespread failure of adoption of games-based learning and offers a model of hope for a future driven by new tools and platforms for personal, experimental game-making as intellectual inquiry.

What happened to playful learning in preschool? -- The evidence for playful learning in preschool -- Epilogue.

This book examines the increasing popularity of creativity and play in tertiary learning, and how it can be harnessed to enhance the student experience at university. While play is often misunderstood as something ‘trivial’ and associated with early years education, the editors and contributors argue that play contributes to social and human development and relations at a fundamental level. This volume invalidates the commonly held assumption that play is only for children, drawing together numerous case studies from higher education that demonstrate how researchers, students and managers can benefit from play as a means of liberating thought, overturning obstacles and discovering fresh approaches to persistent challenges. This diverse and wide-ranging edited collection unites play theory and practice to address the gulf in research on this fascinating topic. It will be of interest and value to educators, students and scholars of play and creativity, as well as practitioners and academic leaders looking to incorporate play into the curriculum.

Pandemic Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic provides critical insights into the impact of the pandemic on the education system, pedagogical approaches, and educational inequalities. Education is often touted as the best way to promote social mobility and produce informed members of society. The pandemic has significantly threatened those goals by temporarily disrupting education and exacerbating disparities in the education system. The scholarship in this volume takes a closer look at many of the issues at the heart of the educational process including teacher self-efficacy, the gendered and racialized impacts of the pandemic on education, school closures, and institutional responses. Drawing on the expertise of scholars from around the world, the work presented here represents a remarkable diversity and quality of impassioned scholarship on the impact of COVID-19 and is a timely and critical advance in knowledge related to the pandemic.

Shows teachers how and why they should bring play into the classroom to make learning meaningful, relevant, and fun. Research studies show that all students—young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural—benefit immensely from classrooms filled with art, creativity, and laughter. Fun, playfulness, creative thinking, and individual expression reinforce positive experiences, which in turn lead to more engaged students, better classroom environments, and successful learning outcomes. Designed for K-12 educators, The Playful Classroom describes how teachers can develop a playful mindset for giving students meaningful, relevant and fun learning experiences. This unique real-world guide provides you with everything you need to incorporate engaging, hands-on lessons and creative activities, regardless of the level and subject you teach. Building on contemporary and seminal works on learning theory and play pedagogy, the authors explain how to inspire your students by bringing play. into your classroom. This clear, user-friendly guide supplies practical strategies and effective solutions for adding the missing ingredients to your classroom culture. Access to the authors’ companion website provides videos, learning experiences, and downloadable teaching and learning resources. Packed with relatable humor, proven methods, and valuable insights, this book enables you to: Provide meaningful experiences that will benefit students both in school and later in life Combine the principles of PLAY with traditional curricula to encourage creative learning Promote trust, collaboration, and growth in students Develop a playful mindset for bringing the arts into every lesson Foster critical thinking in any school community The Playful Classroom: The Power of Play for All Ages is a must-have resource for K-12 educators, higher education professionals, and readers looking for education-based professional development and training resources.

The book is devoted to scholarship in the field of pre-service teacher education, with a specific focus on research into the enhancement of self-directed learning, and contributes to the discourse on creating a disposition towards self-directed learning during the social and academic integration of first-year students within higher education institutions. Two chapters also deal with research on the development of self-directed learning and nuanced understandings of the chosen professions of Law and Health Sciences students. The target audience is scholars working in the fields of teacher education, self-directed learning, engaging pedagogies, problem-based learning, cooperative learning and gamification. Whereas social constructivist learning theory served as an overarching theoretical framework for the virtual excursions, the various chapters in the book also draw on other secondary theories, such as self-determination theory, social interdependence theory, gender theory and the with fitness model of Kounin (1970).

Based on twenty case studies of universities worldwide, and on a survey administered to leaders in 101 universities, this open access book shows that, amidst the significant challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, universities found ways to engage with schools to support them in sustaining educational opportunity. In doing so, they generated considerable innovation, which reinforced the integration of the research and outreach functions of the university. The evidence suggests that universities are indeed open systems, in interaction with their environment, able to discover changes that can influence them and to change in response to those changes. They are also able, in the success of their efforts to mitigate the educational impact of the pandemic, to create better futures, as the result of the innovations they can generate. This challenges the view of universities as "ivory towers" being isolated from the surrounding environment and detached from local problems. As they reached out to schools, universities not only generated clear and valuable innovations to sustain educational opportunity and to improve it, this process also contributed to transform internal university processes in ways that enhanced their own ability to deliver on the third mission of outreach

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically disrupted instruction across higher education. What have International Relations scholars learned from the experience of teaching through this situation? Contributors to this volume consider three themes: how they have adapted to new modes of instruction, what constitutes appropriate care for our students amid crisis, and how we as an epistemic community should prepare for future disruptions.

This book explores early childhood teacher educators’ lived experiences in designing and implementing intentional play-based approaches in teaching preservice teachers. The chapters cover action research, teaching stories about playful classroom practices, and diverse narratives about developing preservice teachers’ positive views toward play. Early childhood teacher educators will be encouraged to (re)explore their beliefs about the roles of play and playfulness in higher education. Readers will learn playful strategies to actively engage preservice teachers in building meaningful knowledge about play and how to use play to support young children’s learning across varied cultural contexts, experiences, and individual differences.