The impact of different play activity designs on students’ embodied learning
| Pages | 611-639 |
| Date | 14 October 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-08-2019-0081 |
| Published date | 14 October 2019 |
| Author | Bria Davis,Xintian Tu,Chris Georgen,Joshua A. Danish,Noel Enyedy |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
The impact of different play
activity designs on students’
embodied learning
Bria Davis ,Xintian Tu,Chris Georgen and Joshua A. Danish
Department of Learning Sciences, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington,
Indiana, USA, and
Noel Enyedy
Department of Teaching and Learning, Vanderbilt University Peabody College of
Education and Human Development, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to build on work that has demonstrated the value of play or game-based
learning environments and to further unpackhow different kinds of play activities can support learning of
academic concepts. To do so, this paper explores how students learn complex science concepts through
collectiveembodied play by comparing two forms of playlabeled as Inquiry Play and Game Play.
Design/methodology/approach –This study builds off of previous research that uses the Science
Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) technology platform (Authors et al., 2015). STEP is a mixed
reality platform that allows learners to playfully explore science phenomena, such as the rules of particle
behavior in solid, liquid and gas,through collective embodied activity. A combination of interactionanalysis
and qualitative coding of teacher and student interactions are used to examine patterns in the learning
processesduring embodied play activities.
Findings –Both forms of play led to similar learning gains. However, Inquiry Play promoted more
emergent, flexible modeling of underlying mechanisms while Game Play oriented students more towards
“winning”.
Originality/value –By contrasting play environments, this paper provides new insights into how
different features of play activities,as well as how teachers orient their students according to these different
features, supportstudents’learning in collective activity. As a result, these findingscan provide insights into
the design of future play-based learningenvironments that are intended to support the learning of academic
concepts.
Keywords Activity theory, Play, Embodiment, Mixed reality,
Computer supported collaborative learning, Teacher mediation
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Researchers and educators have long touted the power of play for supporting learning and
development, though the focus has often been on learning social skills and sociocultural
norms. Furthermore, play has often been treated as something separate from formal
schooling and academicconcepts, with play researchers typically focusingon what happens
during “free time”rather than lookingfor play within traditional classrooms (Rogers, 2011).
However, researchers have been increasingly attending to how play can be a powerful
source for learning of a wide rangeof concepts and practices throughout the lifespan (Göncü
and Perone, 2005;Perone and Göncü, 2014). In addition, the increasingly popular literature
examining how games can supportlearning has brought play further into the spotlight asa
Impact of
different play
activity
designs
611
Received5 August 2019
Revised10 September 2019
Accepted10 September 2019
Informationand Learning
Sciences
Vol.120 No. 9/10, 2019
pp. 611-639
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2398-5348
DOI 10.1108/ILS-08-2019-0081
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2398-5348.htm
powerful pedagogicaltool (Steinkuehler and Squire, 2014 for a review). These literatures are
all too often treated as distinct, and while games are often describedas a form of play, they
are typically not analyzed as, nor compared to other forms of play (de Freitas and Oliver,
2006;Hanus and Fox, 2015). Moreover, this work is often presentedin a monolithic manner
that treats all games as having the same properties, or all play as having the same value.
The goal of the current project is to begin to move beyond this limited encapsulation, and
instead view play and games as existing along a spectrum(Zosh et al.,2018) to explore how
the distinct characteristics of play activities provide both opportunities and challenges for
teachers and learners(DeLiema et al.,2016).
In the current paper, two types of play activities that are both designed to support first
and second grade students as they learn about the particulatenature of matter through play
are compared and contrasted. The first, which this paper refers to as Inquiry Play,is
intentionally open-endedand designed to support students in exploringtheir own emergent
ideas. The second, which this paper refers to as Game Play, is more goal oriented and more
time constrained in a manner similar to many videogames. Both play activities build upon
the Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) platform, a mixed-reality
environment designed to help students explore scientific concepts through embodied play
(Danish et al.,2015). It is important to note that while our focus is ultimately on students’
experience and learning, we recognize that the teachers play a key role in mediating those
experiences. Therefore, to understand the impact of the designs upon the students, we first
want to understand how the designs influence the teachers’approach to guiding students
towards learning goals, which in turn help to shape the context in which the students
experience the games. Therefore, in contrasting these two play activities, we aim to answer
the following researchquestions:
RQ1. How does the organization of play influence the teacher, who in turn mediates
students’experience,and
RQ2. how do other mediators including the rules of play, the goal of the play activity,
and the interactions between studentsfurther mediate students’engagement with
the academic concepts in these two play activities?
The goal in contrasting these two cases is not to evaluate the effectiveness of Inquiry Play
versus Game Play for learning –in fact, pre-post results indicate similar learning gains
across activities –but rather to begin developing a framework for understanding how
different features of similar play activities support learning in unique ways. To support a
systematic comparisonof these different play activities, activity theory (Engeström,2001)is
used to help articulate how the different activities are mediated, and how those mediators
shape the learners’experiences. Below the activity theory approach to studying play is
described, the role of embodiment in the learning activities is briefly highlighted, and we
then summarize how the design of the STEP environment is intended to support learning
about states of matter through embodied play. The analyses then aim to highlight how the
learners experience these different forms of play. The paper concludes by exploring
implications for designers of play-based learning environments that aim to support
engagement with academicconcepts and offer suggestions for future research.
1.1 An activity theory approach to play
While play is often defined based on children’s agency, motivation, their satisfaction of
unmet needs, or a general sense of “fun”(Eberle, 2014), it is found that those definitions
rarely provide clarity in exactly how to design for play activities that support learning
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