I’m excited to be kicking off something special today!
For years, I’ve been speaking at workshops and conferences about the power of play in the early learning environment, which sparked the series of parent letters I’ve written, called Why We Play. This month, I’ll be sharing a special podcast series with the same name: Why We Play.
Every Tuesday and Thursday in February, you’ll find a new episode sharing the science and stories behind why we play, evidence that play is not just cute, it’s incredibly powerful.
This Why We Play podcast series is long overdue – I’m so excited to do a deep dive into a topic I’m SO passionate about and to share some fascinating, compelling research that I absolutely love nerding out on. I hope you’ll join me for the whole month of February.
Whether you’re a champion for play or a playful learning skeptic, this series is perfect for you.
This first episode jumps in, examining play as the key ingredient missing in many modern preschools and as a defining feature of human intelligence.
You can now also find Not Just Cute: The Podcast on Spotify and Amazon Music!
Notes from the Show:
(*May contain affiliate links.)
Find the most recent iteration of the results from the Tennesee PreK Study in this journal article or in NPR’s most recent write-up: A Top Researcher Says it’s Time to Rethink Our Entire Approach to Preschool
Listen to my interview with lead researcher on the Tennesee PreK Project, Dr. Dale Farran in Episode 61.
The Working Paper I mentioned: Why Are Preschool Programs Becoming Less Effective? and the post I wrote about it here.
Constrained vs Unconstrained Skills in this journal article.
Read about Boston’s program in the long-form article or the policy brief.
Dr. Alison Gopnik talks about Boston and the “Sleeper Effect” in general in this Wall Street Journal article.
Dr. Gopnik also shares her observations about human learning and AI in this Wall Street Journal article.
Why We Play
Share the importance of play with the Why We Play letters! Learn more about Why We Play and sign up for the sample letter at the bottom to ensure you hear about any VIP discounts by clicking here!
Highlights
(02:04) The Importance of Play in Education
(10:04) Types of Constrained and Unconstrained Skills
(15:01) The Importance of Play in Preschool
Transcript
Transcript produced by Podium.
00:02 – Amanda Morgan (Host)
Hi, I’m Amanda Morgan and this is Not Just Cute the podcast where we discuss all kinds of topics to help bridge the gap that exists between what we know and what we do in early childhood education. We’re starting conversations with academics, authors, decision makers, educators and parents so that together we can improve the quality of early childhood education while, at the same time, protecting and respecting the childhood experience. I’m excited to be kicking off something special today. For years, I’ve been speaking at workshops and conferences about the power of play in the early learning environment, which sparked the series of parent letters I’ve written called Why We Play. This month, I’ll be sharing a special podcast series with the same name Why We Play. Every Tuesday and Thursday in February you’ll find a new episode sharing the science and stories behind why we play Evidence that play is not just cute, it’s incredibly powerful. Before we jump in, a quick reminder that you can learn more about the Why We Play letters and grab a free sample letter at notjustcutecom forward slash why we play. These letters will help you jumpstart important conversations in your learning community about the importance and power of play in your early childhood setting. People don’t value what they don’t understand. If you want to help parents and colleagues understand the value of play. The why we play letters are a fantastic tool to help you meet that goal. You can find this episode’s show notes, which are always full of links, tidbits and resources, at notjustcutecom. Forward slash podcast. Forward slash, episode 62. This why we Play podcast series is long overdue. I am so excited to jump into a topic that I am absolutely passionate about and to share some fascinating, compelling research that I love nerding out on. I hope you’ll join me for the whole month of February. Whether you’re a champion for play or a playful learning skeptic, this series is just for you. Let’s jump in.
02:27
I remember meeting with a preschool director in Kentucky several years ago. She said to me my board of directors is asking me to show them a research-based curriculum, and I certainly don’t have anything against research, but I know that what they actually want to see is a binder or a box with a stamp across the top that says research-based. And then she got to her key question how do I get them to see that everything we do right now is actually research-based? And many have asked a similar question how do I convince my director, my colleagues or the parents at my school that play really is research-based. These questions are a big reason I do the work that I do.
03:15
I love to dig into the research and I love sharing it with others through the resources and the trainings and the speaking that I do and right here on the podcast. But wrapped into all of those is not just let me tell you about this cool science, but hopefully let me help you to apply that science in the classroom and to confidently articulate that science to others. So today I hope that you’re listening for and taking away bits and pieces that you can put into your own words to help share with others why it is that we need play in our early childhood environments. Today we’re going to jump into some of the overarching research-based reasons for why we need play in early childhood environments. Subsequent episodes will drill down into some of these same topics as well as some other topics, but today let’s just set the foundation. If you’ve listened to previous episodes, some of this will sound familiar, but it’s worth repeating.
04:20
The gold standard for preschool in the United States dates back to research done in the late 60s early 70s, primarily the Perry Preschool Project and the Carolina Abyssidarium Project. The results of these studies established a strong basis for early childhood education in the United States, showing impressive and lasting positive impacts for the children who attended. I like to say that these are the preschool programs everyone has heard of, even if they think they haven’t ever heard of them, because these are the programs that are in the footnotes of so many pieces of research and almost every proposal for funding early education programs. The thing is, replicating the results of these programs that we love to cite isn’t an automatic thing. In fact, a working paper from the Annenberg Institute shows that the preschool programs they evaluated that were established after the year 2000 were much less effective than those from earlier decades. So what happened in the last 20 to 25 years? From my view, it seems that all the good press that early education got and deserved convinced people that preschool would help young children, but it didn’t clarify what the key ingredients of that preschool experience needed to be, and clearly some of those ingredients began to be left out.
05:52
I like to explain key ingredients this way. Imagine making a chocolate cake. There are many, many different recipes for chocolate cake. Personally, I love to bake. I also love to not really follow the directions. There’s always room for a little creativity, right? So maybe you add some sour cream or maybe a special kind of salt or extra chocolate chips and there’s always room for extra vanilla, of course. But if I decide not to put any chocolate in my chocolate cake, is it really a chocolate cake anymore? You can make eggless chocolate cakes, flourless chocolate cakes, but if you make a chocolate cake without any chocolate and you put it down in front of someone claiming that it is in fact a chocolate cake, they’re going to look at you like you’re a crazy person. By that same token, it’s not enough to simply hang a sign that says preschool and gather children in a room together and then magically, by the power of preschool, we get better outcomes for those children.
07:01
Those programs need to have the right key ingredients. So that’s much of what research in the field of early childhood education and child development has looked at. What are the key ingredients that really drive development and learning? What are the key ingredients that make a quality early childhood program? The fact that human beings are complicated creatures makes the study of human development both fascinating and a little bit tricky. It’s hard to isolate just one factor that drives all of development. There are several critical factors that contribute to healthy development, all of which should be consciously and intentionally supported in a quality early childhood program. I think of these elements as strands of a thick, strong rope. Even though we think of the rope as one thing, it’s actually comprised of several smaller strands, each one tightly woven together. Among those strands that I see running throughout developmental science are things like relationships, interactions, communication, agency, curiosity and wonder, and, of course, joy, and play is the perfect context for supporting each one of these. Play can perfectly weave together essentially every strand, every element for ideal development. Those early models, those gold standards of preschool leaned heavily into play and into these key developmental supports. So what happened around the year 2000?
08:50
Researchers say that a shift occurred, a shift both in focus or what was taught, as well as methods or how it was taught. Compared to the gold standards, modern preschools have been more likely to focus on fixed academic skills taught through direct instruction. Less time and attention have been given to the so-called soft skills like decision making, critical thinking, social skills and creativity. The prevailing thought was that it was the academic advantage that was giving preschool participants the edge. If we could just get them to check all those boxes sooner, we could pat ourselves on the back how efficient. This is where we start to see more push-down curriculum academic standards that are being pushed down to younger and younger ages. And as those expectations began to be pushed down, play began to be pushed out. But even as we got better and better at checking boxes, we still missed out on some of the long-lasting benefits and in some cases, like in the Tennessee pre-K study, they actually found negative effects.
10:04
Subsequent research points to two types of skills. Subsequent research points to two types of skills constrained and unconstrained. Think of constrained as a checkbox. It’s constrained or enclosed by those four walls. Unconstrained doesn’t have those same boundaries, it’s open-ended. So a constrained skill is one you can make a checkbox for. Knows the ABCs, check Can count to 20, check Unconstrained skills can be observed, of course, but they’re honed and deepened over a lifetime.
10:42
There’s no finite checkbox. So, for example, vocabulary you definitely learn some in preschool, of course, but there isn’t a fixed number of words and you’re still adding vocabulary every single day, even as an adult. Social skills are another. You’re developing and displaying and practicing them in preschool, but you’ve hopefully honed additional skills in your repertoire throughout your life. The same goes for things like critical thinking, problem solving, communication and creativity. You develop skills in these areas over your entire life. It’s hard to quantify and measure them. They are open-ended or unconstrained.
11:26
Researchers say that many modern preschools have shifted their focus to the extreme onto the constrained skills taught through direct instruction, while the gold standard programs, with the outcomes that we’re chasing, incorporated both constrained and unconstrained skills, supported largely through hands-on, play-based language and relationship-rich environments. So let’s look at two programs studied right around that effectiveness pivot in 2000. The Tennessee Pre-K Program and the Boston Pre-K Program, both of which you can find links to in the show notes. The Tennessee Program showed participants got an immediate boost in test scores but over time actually showed negative effects in both test scores and behavior outcomes. The Boston program, by contrast, showed no immediate boost in test scores but over the long run participants were more likely to take the SAT, go to college and they had lower instances of behavioral problems. According to one area of measurements, tennessee’s program showed twice as much time spent on constrained skills the checkboxes than unconstrained skills the lifetime skills than unconstrained skills the lifetime skills, while Boston’s program had the flip side three times as much spent on the unconstrained skills than the constrained skills. Note that neither one of these programs showed an all-or-nothing approach. We do need both, but these programs certainly showed a difference in focus and methods, and they also showed a difference in outcomes for children. The program that focused more on directly teaching children the constrained checkbox skills had negative long-term outcomes, while the program that focused more on unconstrained, open-ended skills had positive long-term outcomes.
13:31
Dr Allison Gopnik, is a psychology professor and researcher at UC Berkeley. I find her work fascinating. She’s shared some thoughts about the research coming out of these preschool studies. Now Dr Gopnik’s perspectives are of particular interest. She’s not only a leading expert in how babies and young children learn. She’s also been asked to use this expertise as she’s worked with various teams who are trying to understand and develop better AI. At the crux of their conversations is the realization that even babies and toddlers are better learners than our best models of artificial intelligence. These researchers want to know how can we make AI more like children? Her response is that some of the critical elements these models are missing are commonplace in childhood. These are elements like curiosity, experimentation, social learning. It’s play. Can we see the irony here that in an age when scientists are trying to design robots that can learn the way children are wired, we have education programs that are trying to teach children the way robots are wired. Just sit still, I’ll put the information in. You’ll repeat the information back out. Well, based on her background and the research on preschool programs, dr Allison Gopnik says this.
15:14
Programs, dr Allison Gopnik says this. Maybe pre-school is a misnomer. The programs don’t work because they teach specific school skills. Instead, the crucial ingredients may be caring adults and a chance to play, Fundamental parts of good early childhood programs, large or small, private or public. Other research suggests that care and play don’t make you better at doing any one particular thing. Instead, they make you more robust and resilient, better able to deal with the unexpected twists and turns of fate, and ultimately, that may be the best path to success. End of quote.
15:57
So what does research tell us? Are some of the key ingredients for quality preschools? Play in environments with caring, supportive adults. Leaving these ingredients out of an early childhood education program would be like leaving chocolate out of a chocolate cake. Academic skills are still in the mix, of course, but overemphasizing them at the expense of play would be like cutting out the chocolate so you can add extra salt. The ingredients are out of proportion.
16:33
Why do we play? Because research tells us it’s how children are wired to learn and to develop. It makes for a more effective early childhood learning environment. It naturally incorporates crucial elements for healthy development and has lasting positive impacts. We play because we’re human.
16:58
Thanks again for listening to Not Just Cute the podcast. You can find show notes at notjustcutecom forward slash podcast. Forward slash, episode 62. There you’ll find links to some of the articles and research discussed today, as well as other fascinating tidbits I know you’ll find interesting. You can also hit up the show notes for a link to the why we Play letters. Head to notjustcutecom forward slash podcast. Forward slash, episode 62, or go straight to notjustcutecom forward slash why we play to get signed up and download your free sample letter. Please be sure to tune in every Tuesday and Thursday in February to catch the full why we play series focused on better understanding and better articulating to others why we play in early childhood education. I’m Amanda Morgan. You can read more on my blog and sign up for the Not Just Cute newsletter at notjustcutecom. You can also stay tuned for social media updates on Instagram by following me at Amanda underscore notjustcute. Thanks for listening today and, as always, thank you for standing up for children and for childhood.
