AGENCY AS A PLACE OF PLAY AND INVESTIGATION

Positioning play as the ‘engine of learning’ (Miller & Almon, 2009) early years educators embrace play as a key catalyst to plan and create stimulating spaces where inquiry learning and playful investigations can unfold over time. Like yeast to dough, the ‘engine’ of play is engaged when supported by materials, participants and environments, all of which allow play to act as an activator of learning and transformation. The idea of playful spaces for inquiry learning has fascinated me for quite some time; not just because play is considered as a self-propelling force for learning, but also because the relationships between purposeful, intentional spaces and children’s unfolding play is supportive to the active construction of meaning and experience. In this way I often wonder what sense of agency that space and place has within the realms of play and learning? How do the spaces that we encounter act on our experiences? How do they shape and cue our participation?

This week I watched a couple of nine and ten year old children responding with delight and surprise to the layers of ice that had appeared on the puddles in their playground overnight. I observed as they spend a very long period of time investigating and discussing how best to remove the sheets of ice from the puddle without breaking them. With many different theories afoot, they embarked on a negotiated process to move the ice sheets onto the grass and footpath in order to use them as a lens for research; to compare the textures of different ground surfaces viewed through the magnification and reflection of ice. 

Although it was cold that morning, it wasn't long before they proceeded to build a series of 3 dimensional sculptures on the grass and the path. The boys had not walked to school in the early morning chill with an intention to create sculptures of ice, it was the environment that beckoned their participation, offering an invitation too tempting to resist. 

In witnessing these moments I came to realise the levels of attunement of the children to their environment seemed to resonate on a different frequency to my own. The environment speaks to children constantly, in ways that adults often forget to see and hear. 

I recently heard a colleague speaking about the writings of Carl Jung describing how Jung’s view of the world had shaped her own reflections about the practices of education in the early years. My colleague shared a story about a particular moment when a parent in her class had helped her to encounter Jung’s theory of synchronicity (Jung, 1973); which resulted in a great leap of understanding as they began to see the connectedness of children, ideas and environments differently. Jung’s theory of synchronicity centres around the belief that everything is universally connected; that there is a togetherness and system-ness of things. His theories explored the ways in which the elements of life and the world around us work in connected ways to generate experience and potential. This conversation led me to think about the interconnectedness of ‘play’ and the learning environment; the synchronicity of learning. It presents a compelling lens for reflection on the contextual relationships between children’s learning experiences, their sense of agency and the role of the environment. 

I began to wonder… 

What activating forces shape children’s experience of learning through play?

What synchronicities exist between agency, learning, environments and play? 

How does the environment shape experience and trigger possibilities for agentic play and participation?

Perhaps Jung was onto something there... seeking to understand the synchronous relationships between experience, environments and learning would be a worthy pursuit for all teachers and learners, no matter what age or stage of learning.

Fiona 

Jung, C.G. (1973). Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 

Miller, E., & Almon, J. (2009). Crisis in the kindergarten: Why children need to play in school. Alliance for Childhood (NJ3a).