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This brief relates to the second seminar in a series of three around the theme of ‘The Educated Brain’. Each research seminar includes talks from leading researchers and roundtable discussions about the links between research and policy and practice. Presentations at the second seminar built on discussions from seminar 1 by focusing on school years from age 8. Academic presentations covered: inequalities in educational outcomes, researching the adolescent brain, the role of rhythm in cognitive development, transition to secondary school and bilingualism. The keynote lecture delivered by Professor Charles Nelson reported on a body of work investigating the impact of early neglect on children and institutional care.

This brief relates to the first seminar in a series of three around the theme of ‘The Educated Brain’. Each research seminar includes talks from leading researchers and roundtable discussions about the links between research, policy and practice. Presentations at the first seminar on infancy and early childhood focused on where interdisciplinary research can make progress in our understanding, with a focus on the developing brain of young children including: scanning young brains; examining the concept of ‘school readiness’; learning through play; and learning in a stressful environment. Research shows innovative methodologies and data collection being applied in studies such as tracking children’s movements through play and research-informed practitioner tools such as the ‘school readiness questionnaire’. We focused on some areas for policy and practice that may be informed by developing research in education and neuroscience.

This is a summary for The Educated Brain’s Policy Event at Westminster on the 24th April 2018.

Making room for playful learning in school can be difficult. Formidable tensions exist between playful learning and the way pedagogy is currently structured in most schools. Educators often differ in how they value playful learning practices and their understandings of the nature of play. For, what is playful to one learner may not be experienced as playful by another. To those who view play as a central pathway for learning, resources such as time, space, and materials can seem in short supply. To those who see play as silly and off-task, encouraging playful learning can run counter to educational policies that emphasize efficient coverage of the curriculum. We believe that a pedagogy of play—a systematic approach to the practice of playful learning and teaching—is needed to bridge these tensions. Creating and operationalizing such a pedagogy requires a school culture where playfulness is celebrated, examined, made visible, and better understood as a powerful pathway of learning. Indeed, bringing play into a central role in a school entails creating a culture that values the core tenets of play: taking risks, making mistakes, exploring new ideas, and experiencing joy. The purpose of this paper is to share ideas that are emerging from a recent research initiative called a Pedagogy of Play that explores how playful learning can assume a central role in school.