Playful and active pedagogies have been present for many decades and have been applied in basic education schools in Mexico with excellent results, particularly Learning through Play, Project-Based Learning (ABP) and STEAM. Now that the educational community has been forced to innovate by COVID, it has once again been questioned how to upgrade to models with greater student participation and motivation, therefore these models are gaining more and more strength and will undoubtedly be more present in the classroom. and learning centers in 2023.
There are many examples of schools that have adopted these methodologies formally and informally; Carmen Alicia Encinas, Director of the Adelina Encinas Ezrre Kindergarten, in Sonora, affirms about the advantages of promoting Playful Pedagogies: “It is a wonderful opportunity to positively impact the educational community, as well as to effectively influence student achievement . Without a doubt, it has helped us boost student achievement and improve the learning of our girls and boys”.
Precisely for this reason, I would like to explain in a very simple and concrete way how Learning through Play, Project-Based Learning (PBL) and STEAM work and the positive impact they have on the lives of girls and boys:
Start with Learning through Play, while it groups a large number of possibilities. Desirably, an activity of this nature implies (1) that an enjoyable or joyful activity is experienced, (2) that it is loaded with meaning and relevance for the students in what they are doing or learning, (3) that it implies active minds, involved and with focused thinking, (4) as well as iterative thinking (experimentation, hypothesis testing, etc.), and (5) positive social interactions.
According to one of the main organizations worldwide that promote this methodology, the LEGO Foundation, these five characteristics are based on evidence of the learning improvements that children experience when a game mentality is fostered.
I continue with Project Based Learning (ABP), an active and playful methodology, which proposes a teaching and learning modality based on the design, implementation and evaluation of projects applied in the classroom. In it there is a central project where girls and boys must collaborate and provide constructive feedback, in order to achieve significant learning and boost their various abilities and strengths. The project can be of many types; make a school greenhouse, the imaginary design of a house, solve a problem from the news about climate change, etc.
The PBL considers three key aspects: the interests of the students, the subject established by the teacher and its connection with real life. The final result and one of its main objectives is to create a public product that reflects the collaborative learning process that was experienced during the project.
I finish with the STEAM Methodology (acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art or Humanities and Mathematics). This methodology seeks for students to solve an integrating challenge or problem, similar to PBL, making use of all the skills that promote the disciplines that integrate STEAM:
– Science: investigate, know, experiment
– Technology: program, innovate, improve
– Engineering: build, pilot, iterate
– Humanities: communicate, empathize, propose a social change
– Mathematics: measure, calculate, optimize
In the STEAM vision, it is sought that the same project goes through all these disciplines; An example could be that students solve a problem about energy in the community; On the way, explore and investigate how energy is generated, transported and consumed, but also what challenges it presents and from there carry out a project that solves a question in your area.