Setting conditions for learning: Mediated play and socio-material dialogue

Based on two research projects, MicroCulture and Energy at Sea, a meta-level reflection is proposed, about how playful learning affects social interaction and ownership, between learners and their teachers. Playful learning refers to an open- ended model for learning, in which children are given the possibility to choose among different courses of actions and communication, and having fun through self- expression (Marchetti and Petersson Brooks 2012). The results from the two projects showed how playful learning enabled the pupils to gain ownership upon their learning process, through use of digital technologies, within two different contexts. MicroCulture took place in a museum and involved design and test of a tabletop game about the Viking Age. Energy at Sea was conducted in a primary school and learning was mediated through mobile technologies. MicroCulture aims at exploring possibilities to enrich guided tours practice in museums, from the perspective of primary school children (9 to 12 years old). A main goal of the project was to allow children to communicate and ask questions to the guides, who presented this as a challenge. In this sense, it was also noticed that the presence of a game created in the children a need for information, so that they started asking questions to the guides, to be able to play. Moreover, rich insights emerged in relation to children’s individual needs, regarding play and museum experience. Hence children became active participants in their learning process (Vygotsky 1978), also enabling the guides to provide individually meaningful information. During the Energy at Sea project, pupils, 12 to 14 years old, were invited to participate in a group-based project, aimed at eliciting interest and richer understanding of energy production processes and technologies. Each group was free to brainstorm and select among project ideas, in order to develop a prototype, write a report, also reflecting upon their group dynamics, and give a final presentation. Interesting dynamics were identified, in the way students took ownership of the project work and of their group interaction. In some cases, the group members worked smoothly through the project, enjoying the freedom of deciding upon their breaks and the details of the project. Other groups matured through a troublesome process, dealing with social conflicts and intellectual challenges. These projects were conducted with qualitative methods, such as ethnographic observations, interviews, and interpretive analysis of video recordings. In both projects, despite the different contexts, learning practice changed from a traditional lecture-based form, into a form of polyphonic, sociomaterial dialogue (Bakhtin 1986), co-created by children and teachers and mediated by the artefacts either provided by the researchers, as in MicroCulture, or produced by the students, as in Energy at Sea. Learning was enabled through shared ownership, among the individual learners in the context of their groups, but also between teachers and learners. Moreover, as the children were made independent in their own process, specific questions arose in relation to the participants’ individual needs and interests. This kind of interest can be characterised as persuasive and associated with increased knowledge and desire to learn more (Krapp, Hidi & Renninger, 1992). Dewey (1913) emphasises the importance of individual interest in learning situations characterised by having high personal meaning. Hence teachers and guides were enabled to perform a more effective distal arrangement (Rogoff 1990), bringing meaningful ad-hoc adjustments and advices. In this paper, playful learning is defined as a non-formal (Petersson 2006; 2008) sociomaterial dialogue (Wertch 1991), emerging between learners with each other and with their teachers, leaving space for individual needs and self-expression. This sociomaterial dialogue is analysed in relation to the notions of polyphony (Bakhtin 1986) and arousal (Apter 2007). Within a playful learning context, the participants are enabled to express their voices in self-motivated situations, in which a state of engagement is achieved, allowing them to critically discuss their learning process with their facilitators, on a more peer-like level. In this sense, setting conditions for playful learning means to create a context in which learning emerges by itself, through the learners’ engagement within their group and through individual sense-making. Moreover, the material context and the artefact- mediated interaction, such as prototypes provided by the researchers and/or developed by learners, deeply shaped sense-making and learning. This has implication regarding the role of the facilitators, who might need to be trained to master distal arrangement in a proper way. Furthermore, this has implications regarding uniformity or diversity of the learning outcome, since the role of the teacher is continually re-configured, in relation to the changing individual needs of the learners, and their perception of the mediating artefacts.