Creative and playful learning on technology-enriched playgrounds: an international investigation

Abstract

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the degree that creative and playful learning (CPL) in a technology-enriched playground influences academic achievement of students and what factors are responsible for successes. The participants were 276 students from 12 elementary classrooms in the Netherlands and Finland. The research used a pretest–posttest, without control design. The dependent variable was academic achievement on teacher-created tests; the independent variable was participation in the intervention; and the control variables were pretest scores, gender, academic subjects previously studied, age, satisfaction with schooling, country of the school, and classroom within the school. The results showed that there were significant gains in academic achievement and that the pretest was the only significant predictor of posttest achievement. Other variables, including gender, academic subjects studied, age, satisfaction with schooling, country of school, and classroom, were not statistically significant predictors of posttest scores. While students’ academic achievements are only one measure of progress in the current debate about learning in the education system, this article provides insight on education through analyses of the relationships among the integration of curriculum-based learning, CPL practices, and outdoor playgrounds.

Keywords:

• playful learning
• experimental research
• creativity
• technology-enriched playgrounds
• academic achievement

Acknowledgements

A previous version of the paper was presented at the 2010 annual meeting of American Education Research Association. This research was supported by The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), Cicero Learning, OPMON, Finnish municipalities, and company partners (http://InnoSchool.tkk.fi).

Notes on contributors

Justus J. Randolph has a PhD in education research and program evaluation, an MEd in international education, and a certification in educational administration. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor of Education at Mercer University. His research and evaluation experiences have concerned programs that involve newborn hearing assessment, school improvement, higher education evaluation, technology-enriched playgrounds, educational technology research methods, and computing education. He has developed and taught courses in quantitative and qualitative research methods, evaluation, and scholarly writing. He is the author of the book Multidisciplinary methods in educational technology research and development and tens of scholarly articles.

Marjaana Kangas is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Her research has focused on the issues of creative and playful learning environments and various boundary crossing learning practices in primary school settings. She has worked as a teacher in pre-primary and primary school, secondary school as well as in higher education. At the moment, she works in the “Koulu Kaikkialla” (OmniSchool) project, a five-year (2011–2015) research and development project funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. The project is carried out at the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. Previously, she has worked at the University of Lapland and has been involved in the pedagogical groundwork for a technology-enriched indoor–outdoor play and learning environment, Playful Learning Environment (PLE) in the Let's Play Project (2003–2007); and in developing the concept of the future school for the Finnish InnoSchool research consortium (2007–2011). In her doctoral dissertation, the School of the Future: theoretical and pedagogical approaches for creative and playful learning environments, she introduces an approach for creative and playful learning that contributes to the current debate of the role of new technology, games, and knowledge creation in the twenty-first century.

Heli Ruokamo is a professor of education, specialty media education, at University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland. She is also a director of the Centre for Media Pedagogy in the faculty of education at the same university. She is docent of Media education in the faculty of behavioural sciences at University of Helsinki and docent of Network-based Learning Environments in faculty of education at University of Turku, Finland. She is currently (2013–2014, for 1½ years) a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's School of Medicine, USA, and has been earlier in the same position there at H-STAR institute (2009–2010, and 2012, for one year). She has 10 years of experience in research and development of pedagogical models for network-based education and educational use of ICT's. Her research has focused on mobile and meaningful learning, playful, game-based, VR, and simulation-based learning environments, and she has published approximately 90 scientific publications with referee practice, more than two-third of them are international.

Pirkko Hyvönen (http://pirkkohyvonen.wordpress.com) is a post doc research fellow and a principal investigator in the field of learning and educational technology. She works at the Learning and Educational Technology Research Unit (LET) (http://www.oulu.fi/let) at the Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education in the University of Oulu. Her research interests are addressed to technology-enhanced learning, particularly in the frame of expertise and creative collaboration in formal and informal learning environments. She is leading a research project Promoting teacher students' 21st century learning and interaction skills with collaborative ICT tools, which advances research-based teacher education in the university. Her duties include also supporting students with various technologies (mobile media, social media, and cloud services) and pedagogical designs (inquiries, argumentation, and problems) in effective regulation during solo and collaborative learning. Her earlier work includes, e.g. running the Let's Play project in the University of Lapland. Her seminal work together with the research team addressed defining and pedagogically designing of playful learning, and exploring the playful learning environment. Her doctoral dissertation (2008) Affordances of playful learning environment for tutoring, playing and learning is a result of that developmental work. He is a member in the educational committee of the dean and in many international teaching and research networks, such as Naples, Caleidoscope, Earli and AERA.