Play

In the standard classroom environment, children very quickly internalise the difference between learning and play. Unfortunately this, too often, is the distinction between work and fun, pain and pleasure, stick and carrot. This highly artificial binary distinction will be explored in this chapter, seeking to understand the ways in which learning and play can converge. Nonetheless learners come to accept that learning belongs in the domain of work—serious, structured, monitored and hierarchical. Play on the other hand exists in the domain of leisure—silly, frivolous, ill-defined and purposeless. In 2010 Brown noted that adults and young adults are discouraged from playful activity, which is shunned and not respected (Brown, 2010). However, over the following decade, play has become an increasing area of interest, in academic research and popular publications, as well as culture generally. The benefits of play have been explored as have the dangers of being deprived of it (Alison, 2019). Video and tabletop games, once niche subcultural interests, have wider social adoption so that many present innovators and thinkers are the product of a gaming background.