Playful Schools Network
The Playful Schools network was a three year project developed at the LEGO Foundation to connect and empower schools to embrace and sustain learning through play. During COVID it became obvious that much school innovation around adaptive pedagogy was driven by innovative schools within ecosystems of practice. Whilst central government struggled to quickly adapt to schooling in new conditions, some schools like Pierre Elliot Trudeau Elementary School in Canada led the way with innovative practices of playful learning that addressed the challenges of COVID. Likewise the Agora Schools in the Netherlands had broken the chokehold of industrial education within a state school system that offered no unique advantages for the school to have done so. What counted in each case was innovative school leaders and communities.
Just as trees support and nourish each other through mycelial and mycorrhizal networks (the so called ‘wood wide web’) the role of the playful schools initiative was to connect and empower innovators to support the early stages of the diffusion of innovations.
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![Stuart MacAlpine]()
Stuart MacAlpine
Project Lead and Designer
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Ben Mardell
Harvard Project Zero Principal Investigator
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Juliette Hauville
Advocacy and Communications
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Tanvi Sethi
Programme Designer
Connect and empower
A key goal of the project was to connect innovative educators across systems building lasting personal and professional relationships that would connect and empower participants
Theory of Change
The Playful Schools Network was at the heart of a theory of change and embraced a range of strategies to promote learning through play in schools and systems post COVID. The development work used design models and sprints to create a powerful ecosystem intervention.
Ways of working
The project used the LEGO Foundations ways of working with programmatic, evidence and advocacy leads working in coordination to push impact and reach
The Wheel of Impact
Global Amplification with the OECD
The Playful Schools Project partnered with the OECD division for Education and Skills to create a global network of networks to connect and empower schools
Six Covid Recovery Six Bricks MOOC
A COVID recovery, Six Bricks MOOC was developed in a project Stuart led using experts from international education and Education Scotland to support schools in the Playful School Network and beyond to embrace and sustain playful learning to support the reintegration of children after COVID. Over 24,000 educators have taken the course at the time of writing. The course can be accessed for free here: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/coping-with-changes
Stupid Studio
Stupid Studio acted as a design and facilitation partner
Stupid Studio also created the design elements for the project
Take it outside
As an amplification strategy, the project commissioned a documentary called ‘Take it Outside’ to be made with PETES school in Canada which had successfully introduced learning through play and outdoor play as a response to COVID. The director was SHE Films ~ Susannah Heath-Eves
Edutopia
With a common history in Star Wars LEGO, the project engaged with the George Lucas Foundation’s Edutopia team to commission videos that amplified and disseminated the practices of learning through play in schools.
Canadian Playful Schools Network ‘Playjouer’
The project partnered with Professor Andy Hargreaves’s Chenine Center are the University of Ottawa and Trista Hollweck to create a Playful Schools Network in Canada to support the recovery from Covid by connecting and empowering schools to embrace learning through play.