A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Young Creators Conference, an event that brought young people from primary and secondary schools together to share their STEM/STEAM projects. One of the projects I saw is shown in the video. Many of the projects involved makerspaces, a space (and provision of time) for students to build prototypes, which may or may not involve digital technology. When I asked the Young Creators about the learning behind their projects, these stuck out to me:

“We have one STEM lesson a week. We go into a makerspace and we can create whatever we want.”

“We ended up making this by accident after mucking around with things we discovered this can happen.”

This struck me because many of the projects mirrored the concepts of play based learning, which “involves the construction and manipulation of various materials. Ideally, adults will provide a variety of materials, while also providing “just in time” incidental teaching“. Play based learning is a learning and teaching approach that is promoted in early childhood education. It often involves personalises learning and teaching around individual learners’ interests and passions. It promotes learning from trial and error, exploration and discovery. While play based learning is mainly suitable for early childhood education, the elements of personalised learning and learning from trial and error are suitable for learners of all ages. When learners are able to learn through their passions and interests, and are provided with the time, structure, process, support and guidance to create, evaluate and re-create, they are not only learning the STEM/STEAM concepts central to their projects, but also developing trust in themselves, a growth mindset, how to learn from mistakes, problem solving and critical and creative thinking. In comparison, more traditional subjects and ways of teaching often do not allow the time, space or processes to learn from experience. Learning looks almost the same for everyone and learners are pressured to ‘get it right’ the first time.

While not every school has a makerspace, or the timetable structure (yet) to  have STEM/STEAM in makespaces, teachers can most definitely bring play into learning. Playing and ‘mucking around’ aren’t just for pre-schoolers; everyone can learn through play. There’s enough of the so-called ‘serious’ learning already in other areas of the curriculum. It’s time that we make more space and time for play.