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A Quantitative Investigation of Children’s Perceptions of Play and Learning Across Five Countries

Sat, March 23, 8:00 to 9:30am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 326

Integrative Statement

Robert Frost once said, "when work becomes play, and play becomes your work, your life unfolds." What if children felt the same way about learning and play? Evidence increasingly suggests that learning through play is beneficial for children’s development (Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2016; Whitebread, Basilio, Kuvalja, & Verma, 2012), yet mainstream educational systems worldwide have yet to embrace play as an important pedagogical tool (Gray, 2013), and parents often think unstructured play is a waste of time (Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, & Gryfe, 2008). The play versus learning dichotomy forces a false choice between play and learning. Yet an alternative pedagogy may exist: academic content can be taught in a playful manner. When children perceive they are simultaneously playing and learning, they benefit from the intrinsic motivation occurring during play, and the metacognitive awareness of learning which fosters their readiness to learn.
Our study investigates children’s perceptions of this overlap in play and learning in an enjoyable card-sorting task. As part of a larger mixed methods study, 5- and 7-year-old children from five countries (Argentina, Denmark, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, and United States) participated. These countries represent diverse educational systems and academic outcomes. Cultural norms for play and learning may also differ by gender across countries. Additionally, the two age groups provide a glimpse into the minds of children just entering a formal school environment compared to children already in school.
The card sorting task included 36 unique drawings of children participating in various activities (Figure 1). Children were presented with cards to sort as either “play” or “not play” and then shown the same cards to sort as “learning” versus “not learning”. Each image could therefore be chosen as both play and learning, only play, only learning, or neither. We focused here only on the cards selected as both play and learning.
Significant cross-cultural differences emerged in the number of cards children selected as both play and learning (X2 = 185.1, df = 4, p < .001; Table 1). Argentinian and Danish children selected more cards as both play and learning and children from the US and Hong Kong selected the fewest cards as both play and learning. Logistic regressions and loglinear analyses were used to further explore how country, age, and gender influenced the card selections. Across countries, age and gender impacted card selections differently (Table 1). For example, in Hong Kong, a gender by age interaction revealed that 5-year-old boys and 7-year-old girls picked more cards as play and learning (p < .001), yet in Denmark there were no age or gender differences.
These differences in young children’s perceptions by country, age, and gender are a first indication that even young learners make judgements about what activities constitute both play and learning. Understanding children’s perceptions of play and learning may help adults make better decisions about pedagogy, curriculum, and assessments in schools, bearing in mind playful activities to motivate children's interest and learning activities where children will be receptive of the opportunity to acquire new knowledge.

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