Creative Pedagogy of Play—The Work of Gunilla Lindqvist

Abstract

This article presents the work by the Swedish play scholar Gunilla Lindqvist, particularly what she calls creative pedagogy of play and playworlds. Creative pedagogy of play is an educational approach, which advocates the joint participation of children and adults in a collectively created and shared world of fiction—a playworld. Gunilla Lindqvist's pedagogy was designed to investigate how aesthetic activities can influence children's play as well as the nature of the connections between play and the aesthetic forms of drama and literature. Lindqvist based her theory on Vygotsky's theories of art, play, semiotics, imagination, and creativity. Her main idea is that children develop consciousness in dialogical interactions with adults and peers when encouraged and invited to play in a fictitious world where reality and imagination are dialectically related. This article is a homage to her work—it attempts to present her writings through an appreciative and expository fashion.