Children's perspectives of learning through play in the majority world: Findings from Bangladesh, Colombia and Uganda

As efforts to use learning through play (LtP) expand globally, it is important to explore how children's perspectives impact the efficacy and experience of this pedagogical approach. LtP has been conceptualized as a spectrum from free play to guided play to teacher-directed play. This spectrum describes different ways in which play happens—with varying levels of adult support—and acknowledges that children's agency is characterized by choice and the ability to direct, participate in, and/or initiate play. Previous research has primarily focused on adult perceptions of LtP for preschool children in high-resource contexts. We present the perspectives on LtP of children (3–12 years) in Bangladesh, Colombia and Uganda. We photographed learning activities in community centres and schools that incorporated play-based practices. In group discussions, we used these photographs to elicit children's perspectives on the difference between play and learning in the classroom, the factors that influence their construction of play and learning, and the role that teachers play in these activities. Conceptualizations across the three research sites and ages were similar: Children associated learning with play if the activity was fun and social; distinctions between play and learning were defined by content, modality, materials and location; and teachers were seen as involved in play under limited conditions. We discuss the implications of our findings for the implementation of LtP in majority-world contexts. By moving teachers from a primarily teacher-directed approach to more guided-play approaches, we are not only asking teachers to give up some control but are also asking children to think about adults in fundamentally different ways. This research highlights that we may need to couple professional development for teachers with approaches that support children to change their perceptions of agency and choice in the classroom.