The importance of play for mental, social and emotional development was highlighted by Mahmood, a psychologist, an executive director of UC Links and a network of “play-based” education.
The programs take inspiration from Lev Vygotsky, an influential 20th century Belarusian developmental psychologist and early advocate of play in education and a host of scientific studies will confirm the importance of play in learning.
Play encourages children to explore the limits of their imagination, creativity and problem solving, but most importantly play helps children to develop a sense of agency to “be one foot taller than they actually are”
Play allows us to go outside and try out new things which we might not be able to experience and it makes anything seem possible.
Mahmood argues that these skills will become increasingly important as more jobs become automated as advances in computing and artificial intelligence continues to disrupt society.
The Oakland program is where children learn math and science through games as well as they learn many other activities which is designed to foster STEM learning. But the focus varies at each of the roughly 30 programs operating under the UC Links umbrella. Each one is connected to a university close by, which provides facility to graduate students and undergraduates to get teaching experiences and perform research on the power of playful learning and related concepts, and for students to get top quality educational opportunities at a low cost.
UC links programs are organized, so pupils have a choice- generally they are given many options and can choose which activity to participate in, are usually hands-on, concrete activity, rather than passive, abstract rote learning. They usually allow space for creativity and experimentation. And they are collaborative, promoting the development of the social skills that, hopefully, will make them suffer less from the epidemic of isolation and loneliness at the heart of the teen mental health crisis.
The programs vary widely. In San Luis Obispo, partners at Cal Poly are experimenting with ways to use play to teach local school children about microbiology, it’s an activity which involves a tag-like game where the children pretend to be viruses and infect their classmates. The goal is to learn about herd immunity.
Children say that this is a fun way of learning, instead of being forced to learn. When you’re in your free will, and you want to learn by yourself, it’s better since we get to hang around with our friends most of the time and we have a choice to do the activities that we want to do.
