Exploring disruptive pedagogies through play

Play, in its widest sense, embodies such great opportunities to authentically connect learners by creating engagement and connectedness. It can do so in a very honest and innocent way that connects with learners on a deeper level. But what exactly are those opportunities and how can learning approaches, which embody play, be effective? (1)

Play can enable students to connect with their own identities more deeply and help them more openly communicate. It can help us deconstruct walls and enable students to engage with content and each other more meaningfully.

In addition, the greater the access to each other – for example students’ individual artistic practices or simply their opinions and beliefs, the more opportunity for honest connections to exist between them. (2)

Particularly for creative practitioners who teach, the idea of play can inherit both learning object and learning process. For example, play could be inherent in an artistic performance and therefore part of the artwork itself, and it could facilitate interaction between participants in the classroom.

Play narratives and environments can create such new experiences for students to engage with content and connect with each other, there are elements of play that may become disruptive.

Play offers opportunities for students to connect with their own identities and beliefs, communicate these with the group, and ultimately deepen their learning. But how could I use play as a disruptive conduit to diversify opportunities? And how do I differentiate between applying play to the learning environment, as opposed to the learning object? Lastly, as an institution our aim is often to reduce disruptions, but we must consider how play and disruption can be conducive to learning.

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References

1. In reviewing the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, including his concept of “play”, Vilhauer explains that “… it is only by presentating something else, in the back-and-forth movement of playing a game, that a human being is able to present his/her self. … our being-present or being-here is intimately wrapped up with being-a-participant inside some world, some community with others in which we attend to the presentation of something beyond ourselves, that is, the subject matter of our worldly experience” (Vilhauer, 2010, p.41).
2. Vilhauer states that “in every artistic presentation there exists an articulation of our reality, of world, or of some subject matter to which we all (in principle) have access. This articulation involves pointing to something, illuminating something in a particular way, or showing something as something specific, so that it can be seen clearly and meaningfully by us. (Vilhauer, 2010, p.43).

Further notes and reflections

Play can challenge the status quo of how learning is, at times, facilitated, and it can challenge students to interact differently with learning materials as well as with each other.

In a recent article, Spurr describes an experiment in which students were invited to ‘disrupt’ their learning experience by drawing on digital slides used within their digital learning space – similarly to how graffiti is applied to buildings. “As the students scratched their messages, and doodles onto the slides, they began to construct their own virtual graffiti, altering and transforming the conventional and, perhaps, transmissive, space of the online class” (Spurr, 2022, p.6). Inspired by the disruptive nature of physical graffiti, the experiment creates a digital disruption to students’ usual learning space, creating new ways for them to engage with materials and connect with each other.

The experiment highlights several elements often found in play and these in turn are crucial in creating authentic engagement and connectedness.

“If we allow students to engage with material in ways that might be seen as disruptive, we engage in trust, openness, and collaboration with them, and we also importantly allow a cathartic function that can channel frustrations, conflicts, and other tensions into aesthetic outlets. The public nature of graffiti and inscribing of public/digital spaces is deeply communal but the work is always subject to transformation itself, with the possibility of being written or drawn over” (Spurr, 2022, p.6).

There are other questions to be explored here. For example, what are the differences in disruptive pedagogies using online environments? Campbell explains that there is value in embracing more or less autonomous disruptions, such as glitches and technological disturbances” (Campbell, 2022, p.5) but also in looking towards students who “use or misuse the technology in creative, inventive, subversive and unexpected ways” (Campbell, 2022, p.8). When we look at online education, there seem to be additional opportunities for disruptions to occur ‘spontaneously’ as well as others to be staged and embedded within the virtual environment. And of course, these could be integrated as part of moments of play.

Bibliography

Campbell, L. (2022) “‘Digital Pedagogies Open Studio’: disruptions, interventions and technoempathy,” Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5(1), pp. 5–15. Available at: https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark (Accessed: January 14, 2023).

Spurr, G. (2022) “The cathartic function of drawing where you shouldn’t,” Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 5(1), pp. 82–89. Available at: https://sparkjournal.arts.ac.uk/index.php/spark/issue/view/11 (Accessed: January 14, 2023).

Vilhauer, M. (2010) “Chapter Three – Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator,” in Gadamer’s ethics of play: Hermeneutics and the other. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 41–41.