INSIGHTS

2023.07.13

R&D DISCUSSION Vol. 48

The world is full of possibilities
--Perceive playfully and take action! [Part 1]

Nobuyuki Ueda Professor Emeritus of Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts, Director of Neo Museum

R&D DISCUSSION TOP

Q: In recent years, the nature of "learning" has changed dramatically not only in schools but also in society. What kind of abilities are required of us now?

A: I think each individual needs to become a "learning designer." In other words, it means designing their own learning and continuing to learn.

I have specialized in "learning design" at the Department of Contemporary Child Studies, Faculty of Contemporary Society, Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts, an interdisciplinary department that studies the relationship between children and society from multiple perspectives. I believe that two elements are necessary to become an autonomous learning designer: a playful spirit and reflective intelligence. I define playfulness as "the excitement that arises when you are seriously working on something." It is an attitude of becoming engrossed in something and moving forward. "Play" and "learning" are often perceived as different things, but in fact, play is full of learning. I have been exploring a new vision of learning, with the concept of "playful learning." "Reflective intelligence" is literally translated as "reflective intelligence." It is the ability to create new meaning by looking back on one's experiences and reconstructing them.

A "playful spirit" allows you to get absorbed in things and keep moving forward, while "reflective intelligence" allows you to stop and reflect on things from time to time, make corrections, and then move forward again. A balance between these two wheels is necessary for everyone, not just children but also adults like us, to become autonomous learning designers. In the sense of continuing to learn throughout one's life, we are "learning" designers, not "learn" designers.

Q: How will learning unfold if the elements of "playful spirit" and "reflective intelligence" are incorporated?

A: I will introduce two workshops that circulate both playful spirit and reflective intelligence. The first is a workshop where parents and children make flip books together [Photo 1]. Parents and children pose with their whole bodies to take a photo, and the photo is projected onto a board on the wall. They place large Lego blocks along the shadows, but if they get too close, they can't see the whole picture, so they need to look at it from above. They move closer to the board and then away. While discussing with their children, they move the Lego blocks little by little in line with the movements of the poses, completing the flip book [Photo 2]. At first glance, it may seem like just playing, but it is completed through repeated immersion and bird's-eye views, and through dialogue with the work. This "play ∩ learning" that stimulates creative imagination is called "learningful play" or "constructionist learning."

The second is a workshop where elementary school students create stop-motion animations with their friends. Programming education has been compulsory in elementary schools since 2020, but in this workshop, instead of working silently in front of a PC individually, students learn the importance of metacognition and programming-like thinking through experience as they create animations in teams. When they test the animation they created, it usually doesn't work the way they expected at first. The team discusses what the problem is and tries again. It still doesn't work the way they expected. They wonder what to do. Everyone is absorbed in trial and error. This real-time repetition is what is necessary for learning programming. I believe that the educational significance of programming is that everyone experiences the new common sense that "it can't work from the beginning" and learns to reach the goal while debugging (correcting) it.

Recently, the concept of "tinkering" has been gaining attention. It involves tinkering with various phenomena, materials, and tools, rather than following a blueprint. In the process of linking hands, eyes, and mind, an idea suddenly pops up, and a purpose emerges. New ideas are born through the tinkering process of being "interested, drawn in, and hooked."

[Photo 1] A flip book made by placing blocks along a family photo
[Photo 2] Repeatedly placing blocks and looking down

[Photos 1 and 2: Provided by Nobuyuki Ueda]

Continued in Part 2

PROFILE

Professor Emeritus of Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts, Director of Neo Museum

Nobuyuki Ueda

Nobuyuki Ueda

Born in Nara Prefecture in 1950. After graduating from Doshisha University, inspired by Sesame Street, he obtained an M.A. from Central Michigan University Graduate School and an Ed.M. and Ed.D. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. From 1996 to 1997, he was a visiting researcher at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. From 2010 to 2011, he was a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab. His specialty is educational technology. With playful learning as his keyword, he is conducting cutting-edge research into learning environment design and media education. His publications include Playful Thinking: A way of thinking that makes work fun (Sendenkaigi) and Workshops of Collaboration and Expression: Designing an Environment for Learning (Toshin-do, co-authored and edited).

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Update : 2023.07.13

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