Guest post by Kirsty Dunnett: “Where could Higher Education go? A hopeful perspective”
New super interesting guest post by Kirsty Dunnett, on playful higher education!
Several recent events have reminded me exactly how lucky I have been, not least in the career choices that I have made over the past few years, although I have gone against almost every piece of what little academic career advice I ever received. But that advice was for how to win in a system that prioritises a ‘performativity-based approach to higher education’ [1], and that does its level best to stifle dissent and mark (in)correct work against pre-defined, ‘transparent’ standards that are non-negotiable and leave as little space as possible for variation, error or argumentation. Or, a system in which
“It is the university’s responsibility to produce the right students with the right competencies and skills that enable them to occupy the right jobs that will ensure the right socio-economic growth. As such, there are production schemes and measurement tools in place to ensure that students are produced at ample speed and with desirable employability (Nørgård et al. 2019). Thus, the university has become a professional competence factory, complete with branding strategies, corporate culture, accelerators, incubators, strategic communication and so on (Barnett 2011). This constitutes what could be termed ‘the accelerated university’, where students are driven through higher education as fast and efficiently as possible in order to be put to hard work in society.”
Heck do I recognise that from my own undergraduate and, especially, PhD ‘education’; even much of my schooling conformed to the ideal of providing as many ‘correct’ answers as possible in the shortest period of time.
A few weeks ago, I received an email advertising what turned out to be a very interesting seminar, and one that has left me with a more hope than I’ve had for a while, as well as a much clearer idea of how one may work against an education system that has been politicised to prioritise an unambiguous and unarguable distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ student actions (most obvious in marking exam responses). Although the seminar did not make this point, it’s become increasingly clear to me that one reason we, as university teachers, see very little ‘academic risk-taking’ may be because our poor students come to university having typically spent at least 12 years learning to do and say what is ‘right’ according to authority, and being penalised, often harshly, for what is deemed ‘wrong’, or for any questioning that threatens the teacher authority, for example through challenging their expertise or going beyond the limits of their subject knowledge. This basically continues through all taught courses at university, and then teachers have the gall to complain that students lack initiative, critical thinking skills and any other form of independent thinking when it comes to project work.
So what can one do? Play! Or rather, provide opportunities for students to be playful.
This means developing a ‘Playful Higher Education’, and fortunately for us, Rikke Toft Nørgård provides a theoretical foundation for this in the chapter ‘Philosophy for the Playful University – Towards a Theoretical Foundation for Playful Higher Education’ [1] that I summarise below.
Firstly, a focus on games, gamification and gamified higher education is deeply problematic because it is entirely consistent with winning according to established rules. Particularly worrying is that the formal recognition of completion (often for very minor achievements – seriously, ‘well done’ for an everyday activity is patronising) in gamified systems has significant negative effects on intrinsic motivation – which is what researchers want students to have. Perhaps more worryingly is that this also discourages academic risk-taking. From a systematic perspective, gamification is part of a broader contractual approach to Higher Education that “encourages students to “do education” through manipulation of point-based incentive system”. (Saw that far too much in the UK.)
This isn’t to say that games don’t have their place in education, but rather that they should not be the organising structure. For example, games that test memorisation of e.g. terms and vocabulary, can clearly make the learning process more enjoyable than simple repetition. The point is that (digital) games can have their place, and research supports their effectiveness as a method – at least in certain contexts and for specific purposes.
It seems that even more that games, playfulness suffers from the perception of being anathema to the ‘serious’ business of higher education non-serious, and implications of being some form of relaxation, pause or social activity. But this is not necessarily the case.
Nørgård summarises the current philosophical understanding of the role of play as follows:
“[Play is] a core aspect of curiosity, creativity and communality. Play is not something fun standing outside “serious affairs” or “adult life”, but is a life force, elevated thinking, doing and being, a sacred fellowship and a cornerstone in culture and human existence.”
However, an important distinction between ‘play’ and ‘playful[ness]’ needs to be made:
“Play activities have their own goal and purpose, meaning that there is no purpose of play outside the activity play. The play activity establishes and unfolds its own purposes within and through play, and as such, no external aims, purposes or intentions can be imported into a play activity.” Meanwhile, “[Playfulness] preserve[s] the purpose of the original context or activity it is applied to. However, ungovernability, unpredictability, unknowability and un-usability – the traits of play activities – are still present in the activity or context.”
Within existing theorisation and research into playfulness in higher education, Nørgård summarises three important frames:
“1) playful curiosity, that is, play as life and force within higher education exploratoriums:“
– In this frame, a university becomes something of a cabinet of wonders (Wunderkammer, not too unusual in the 18th and 19th centuries), where the act of engaging in play allows one to explore the world as one didn’t previously view it. This may feel dangerous: the “players ‘play along’“, but “the play plays the players“. It’s about indulging curiosity without working where it might lead, open wonder (so often lost long before one finishes compulsory education) and potentially risky of exploration: rules may change and even realities be different. Through play, not only does one explore the world as it is, and as it may be, but also reconsider one’s place in the world. Play is a means of opening up to possibilities, and the precursor to both understanding and creativity.
“At the centre of playful, higher education as exploratorium is [..] the constitution of sacred spaces and practices for imagining possibilities, for testing strange ideas, for trying out new forms of knowledge and practices, for crossing boundaries and for engaging in open-ended thinking.”
“2) playful creativity, or play as form and act within higher education experimentariums:”
– In this frame, one considers how playful spaces are created from forms, actions and worlds, and specifically how higher education could be “an oasis of creativity […], where the desire to play is acted out through the play question ‘how can we…?’ Within the philosophical understanding of play, play requires that one plays ‘both within and with the rules’, or that one adheres to the rules, and makes changes to them. Play can take different forms, competition within rules and chance are perhaps not too useful or desirable in higher education, while mimicry, “characterised by imagination, invention and interpretation” appears particularly applicable. The vertiginous ‘ilinx’ in which players succumb to the play, and emotions can be extreme, certainly challenges the traditional conceptions of education, and to me highlights how important trust (implicit through the mention of ‘safe spaces’, though the impossibility is omitted [as Mirjam writes here]) is, and I think is a form of play that one should be very careful about trying to prompt unless students are in self-selected groups where all group members can trust each other implicitly (though most seminar attendees didn’t seem to consider trust as a pre-requisite to playfulness, making me suspect that few attendees had faced or suffered stigma or discomfort over an extended period – or if the had, were unwilling to be in any way active).
“3) playful communality, based on play fellowship and play culture within higher education collaboratoriums:”
– This is perhaps the frame that speaks most directly to me in terms of higher education. Specifically where play becomes a common endeavour, that through play one builds up a community. Playful fellowships and cultures flourish on the basis of
“the participant’s co-construction of a space that is safe, sacred and shared. As such, the playful collaboratorium is based on mutual trust, freedom to fail, cooperation, communality and denotes a space wherein collectives are curious and creative together through ‘what if…?’ and ‘how can we…?’ thinking and tinkering.”
Nørgår quotes Greene 1995: “Our classrooms ought to be nurturing and thoughtful and just all at once; they ought to pulsate with multiple conceptions of what it is to be human and alive.” It might sound rather utopian, but why can’t it be realised? Here the space is shared (with the implication that if it is shared it should be safe?).
This last puts me strongly in mind of an activity I regularly engage in where the appropriate verb is ‘to play’, although the chapter makes no mention of such an activity though it is hardly unusual: I ‘play’ the cello (well enough to tell be able to tell you exactly how hard Bach’s sixth suite for cello and Dvořák’s cello concerto are), and most weeks play with an amateur orchestra (whose rehearsals are technically meetings of a ‘study circle’). In the latter endeavour, we have a strong sense of mutual commitment to a common result; the process is as much of the point as the concert. I have no idea whether this form of ‘play’ is discussed in the broader literature on ‘play in adulthood’ which is apparently ‘stigmatised’, but for me, it’s perfectly obvious that ‘play’ can be perfectly serious. It’s perhaps curious to note that the stigma I (now) get for playing the cello is from people (usually anglophone) who interpret this as a mark of extreme privilege, and who seem to be completely oblivious to the possibility that an unusual callous – shared by any professional cellist – and a stretched left hand may not be the results of childhood brilliance and opportunity, but rather reflect many years of (ongoing) effort, dedication and frequent frustration.
The first and third frames are very difficult to argue with and are well aligned with a liberating ideal of higher education and can easily be incorporated in small ways throughout teaching. However, the second frame however makes me wonder whether playful higher education may make social competence a stronger discriminating factor of success than it already is, thus perpetuating the disadvantage of students who do not start university well versed in academic social norms (expected behaviour) or who are otherwise uncomfortable in uncertain and social situations (e.g. students with autism — which may be undiagnosed). But overall, of the tools and approaches for promoting independent thought and action on the part of students that I have encountered over the past few years, this certainly has an awful lot going from it – for one, it is systematically theorised.
Perhaps most importantly for educators, realising playful education seems to be quite straightforward: provide opportunities not for ‘failure’, but for ‘play’. Learning should be enjoyable, which is not the same as fun or frivolous. Perhaps one of the reasons this rings so true is because it seems to be exactly what I have been doing in several recent projects without any specific theoretical basis, but simply on the premise of wanting students to make their own decisions and therefore provide opportunities where there is nothing strictly incorrect beyond not thinking for oneself. Tools such as Activity Bingo [3] and activities such as the Ball and Bottle experiment [4] fit very nicely within this framework. There is no ‘gamification’, but rather honest recognition of inquisitiveness – of asking questions, and even quite literally poking one’s nose into places where and when one might not immediately think one should, for taking risks, even for owning up to a ‘lack of prior knowledge’ or ‘mistakes’.
Is playful education a panacea? Probably not, but it may be closer to one than any other proposal I’m aware of:
“A genuine playful university is, still, a utopia. But it is a feasible utopia. As works within playful higher education show, there are already thinking, practical knowledge and practice present to show that such a utopia could be reached. And as shown in the tension between the present accelerated university and the potential future of the playful university, it contains both optimism and pessimism.“
Playfulness includes playing with the rules. And, though Nørgård doesn’t make this point, this may be seen as particularly threatening to lecturers who build their positions on being the most knowledgeable person in the room, the one who writes the rules and defines what is right and wrong by comparison with accepted standpoints. One of the many famous lines from Hamlet is “The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” Perhaps one of the existential threats of playfulness in education is that the ‘monarch’ (lecturer) risks catching their own conscience?
But, playfulness will not – and should not – receive (full) recognition within a marketised and outcomes-focussed higher education system. It is a force for disruption, not for gaming the system. As Nørgård writes near the end:
“Playfulness should not be operationalised to fix or improve a broken system or practice, but embraced to transform it. The playful university is not a colourful playground filled with fun play materials and relaxing play activities. Rather, the playful university is evoked and materialised through the deeper pedagogical structures, attitudes and approaches emerging from the philosophical and theoretical play frames. As such, the playful university and playful higher education pose a challenge – perhaps even a threat – to the climate, environment and regimes pervading current higher education institutions and practice.“
[1] Nørgård, R.T. (2021). Philosophy for the Playful University – Towards a Theoretical Foundation for Playful Higher Education. In: Bengtsen, S.S.E., Robinson, S., Shumar, W. (eds) The University Becoming. Debating Higher Education: Philosophical Perspectives, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69628-3_10
[2] Glessmer, M.S., L. Latuta, F. Saltalamacchia, and K. Daae. 2023. Activity bingo: Nudging students to make the most out of fieldwork. Oceanography, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2023.217
[3] Dunnett, K., & Magnusson, M. H. (2025). Qualitative observations in university physics laboratories: an example from classical mechanics. arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.15988.