Childhood Education

ISSN: 0009-4056 (Print) 2162-0725 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uced20

Playful Learning Landscapes: Creating skill-

building experiences in community spaces

Molly A. Schlesinger & Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

To cite this article: Molly A. Schlesinger & Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (2019) Playful Learning
Landscapes: Creating skill-building experiences in community spaces, Childhood Education, 95:4,
3-9, DOI: 10.1080/00094056.2019.1638704

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2019.1638704

Published online: 10 Jul 2019.

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 Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy
Playful
Learning
Landscapes
Creating skill-building experiences
in community spaces

Molly A. Schlesinger and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Temple University

July/August 2019 3
 Children are always learning. Innovative
initiatives that offer opportunities for learning and
skill building in environments outside of school are
as important as ones designed for the classroom.

Research suggests that over 70% of the world’s Assembling the Pieces: Architecture
children will be living in cities by 2050. In Meets Learning Science
response, cities are rallying to create family
friendly environments—making parks where Conscious Cities. The Conscious Cities
ribbons of asphalt once divided communities Movement is the architectural centerpiece
and creating community gathering places all of Playful Learning Landscapes. Inspired
can enjoy. Playful Learning Landscapes is part by forward thinking architect, Itai Palti, the
of this broader initiative. It is the very first initiative is interdisciplinary in its reach. Rather
project to marry the science of how children than focusing on building the most efficient
learn with the ambition to make cities more cities, the Conscious Cities Movement uses
livable. At that intersection of science and psychology and neuroscience data to create
placemaking, we are creating a new kind of environments that are tailored to the needs of
architecture that sparks curiosity and learning the population. For example, older populations
while at the same time heightening the beauty often feel lonely in city environments despite
of the cityscape. being surrounded by population density. An
architectural, psychology-based solution would
Playful Learning Landscapes was born from be to build a park with shaded areas where
two ideas—the emphasis on playful learning folks can convene and form community.
as a way to enhance how children develop the
skills required to meet the workplace needs The goal of Playful Learning Landscapes is
of today and tomorrow and the Conscious to infuse neighborhoods with opportunities
Cities Movement for enhancing livability in for children and adults to interact around
ways that support healthy lifestyles. The first mentally stimulating architecture. For
designs and projects began rolling in 2010; example, we refashioned the familiar outdoor
now, for the first time, we have the evidence game of hopscotch, enhancing it with more
that these projects do invite precisely the kinds opportunities to exercise impulse control.
of caregiver-child interactions that promote By playing hopscotch on the sidewalk rather
strong learning. than rushing home from school, children are
engaging in a playful learning activity that
Playful Learning Landscapes seeks to transform fosters higher-order cognitive skills and self-
our everyday spaces into innovative ones that regulation. If other children are also gathered
provide children intuitive opportunities for on the sidewalk, opportunities arise for
learning and skill building. Playful Learning fostering social skills and even teamwork.
Landscapes installations and programming
infuse otherwise mundane moments—waiting The Conscious Cities Movement dovetails
at the bus stop, walking through supermarkets, with UNICEF’s Child Friendly Cities
or sitting in libraries—with opportunities to Initiative, creating environments where
increase social interaction and exposure to children’s safety and well-being is key. Playful
activities that are foundational to later success. Learning Landscapes considers the importance

4 Childhood Education: Innovations

of building cities, neighborhoods, and Playful Learning
public environments where children have Landscapes activities
opportunities to thrive. And our designs adapt
to fit the culture we are in, whether that be invite visitors to practice
Philadelphia; New York City; Nairobi, Kenya; the foundations of
or Venice, Italy. 21st-century skills:
collaboration,
Developing 21st-Century Skills. Playful
Learning Landscapes is crafted to complement communication,
skill building often addressed in school. This confidence, content
is done first and foremost by creating organic learning, creative
opportunities for children and caregivers to innovation, and critical
interact where interaction seldom occurs. A
simple sign in the dairy isle of the grocery store
thinking.
can prompt caregivers to ask their children
“Where does milk come from?,” starting
contingent conversations in moments that
otherwise would be filled with silence. In skills build off one another and, importantly,
lower-income neighborhoods, these prompts can be fostered anywhere, including informal
boosted communication by 33%, raising it public spaces such as parks and bus stops.
to levels already occurring in upper-income
neighborhoods. Starting with a foundation Playful Learning, a Pedagogy. Playful
of social interaction tied to evidenced-based learning embraces the concept that children
science about how children learn best, Playful and adults learn from play, and learn best when
Learning Landscapes activities invite visitors to play includes intentional learning goals—
practice the foundations of 21st-century skills: what we call guided play. In school settings,
collaboration, communication, confidence, playful learning curriculum often mirrors the
content learning, creative innovation, and Montessori and Reggio Emilia approaches,
critical thinking. in which children learn best from hands-on,
minds-on discovery activities they can guide
Communication—being able to express themselves.
ideas clearly in a variety of contexts and to
multiple audiences—and collaboration— Laboratory work and theory provide
working productively with others to achieve monumental support that playful learning
a goal—are both vital for developing social pedagogy is beneficial for young children.
relationships and becoming an effective learner. Playful learning pedagogies help develop
Critical thinking—evaluating information higher-order cognitions, self-regulation, and
and synthesizing it toward a more focused social skills. Playful learning activities, such
goal—and creativity—putting ideas together as building blocks with a partner, playing
in new ways—are imperative for problem chutes and ladders, and solving puzzles
solving and innovation. Confidence means require children focus their attention, think
taking risks, persevering toward a goal, and critically and plan ahead, behave flexibility,
having a growth mindset, which allows creative constructively react to social partners, and
innovation to flourish without the fear of build STEM skills. Similarly, children have
failure. Finally, content knowledge—knowing also been found to learn mathematics from
the ABCs, numbers, history, geometry, and board and card games and geometry from role
science—as well as the all-important learning- playing, and to develop self-regulation during
to-learn skills—memory, attention, and flexible competitive and team activities. Finally, playful
thinking—are all necessary components for learning activities have also been shown to
later school success. These deeply intertwined bolster vocabulary and language learning.

July/August 2019 5
 building opportunities that capitalize on
children’s waking hours when not in school.
Playful learning should drive both learning and
community culture.

Moving From the Idea and the Science to

Implementation. Have you ever noticed
exercise equipment in a park, which invites us
to put down our bags and try a few repetitions
on the elliptical before we go on our way?
In Playful Learning Landscapes, we seek to
offer mental gymnastics through light-touch
interventions. By placing the installations in
public spaces, they are accessible to everyone.

It is important that Playful Learning

Landscapes installations be appropriate and
adapted for each community—both in concept
and in design. Thus, our team generally starts
by listening to the community needs. We
then sketch ideas and seek the community’s
feedback. Based on that feedback, we tweak
the designs and work together to ensure we
are developing something that the community
wants to own and is proud of, and that reflects
evidenced-based research about how children
learn best. We seek to discover the how and
what for each installation. Is the installation
fun, active, engaging, socially interactive, and
meaningful? Do the installations support
collaboration, communication, confidence,
creative innovation, critical thinking, and
Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy content learning? We detail this process in our
playbook (playfullearninglandscapesphl.org).

The result is a strong, evidence-based,

culturally sensitive, and architecturally
In the U.S. public education system, interesting installation that belongs to the
opportunities for playful learning are rare. community. Cultural sensitivity is sometimes
With emphasis on high-stakes testing, as simple as making sure all text is in both
rigorous rote learning lessons are being English and Spanish, or placing an image
pushed on children at younger and younger of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the street
ages, and are more recently showing up in corner where he gave a monumental speech in
kindergarten and preschool classrooms. Playful 1965.
learning opportunities for both preschool
and primary school—such as recess, art, Seeing an Example: The Case Study
music, or explorative play—are, in some of Urban Thinkscape
cases, disappearing from schools altogether. What does all of this look like in action? Take
Therefore, Playful Learning Landscapes adopts a peek at Urban Thinkscape, a bus stop in
an out-of-school approach to providing skill- West Philadelphia where Playful Learning

6 Childhood Education: Innovations

 Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy

Landscapes collaborated with the community learning opportunities to engage children

to create a new way to think about public and caregivers while they wait for the bus.
spaces where people wait. Each installation has specific curriculum
goals, and address needs identified by the
We brought the idea to members of the West neighborhood. Icons prompt storytelling that
Philadelphia Promise Zone, a two square mile develops literacy skills; spatial puzzles develop
portion of the United States designated by skills that are predictive of later mathematics
the Obama Administration in 2014 as high skills; abstract artwork builds critical thinking,
priority for improving education and career curiosity, problem solving, and inquiry skills;
opportunities. The 35,315 residents in the and a modified version of hopscotch promotes
Zone includes represent an overall poverty rate
of 50.8%, double the city’s 25.7% poverty
rate. When we first asked what the community
wanted, the answers were straightforward—
something playful that will help children,
something beautiful in the blighted
neighborhood, and some reason for children
to want to stay rather than flee. Community
members attended multiple meetings to sketch
their image of the project in more detail. They
chose a lot on a street corner where Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. gave a significant speech in
1965, drawing 10,000 visitors; the site is near
and dear to the hearts of the community.
Ultimately, the community input contributed
to design of an Urban Thinkscape with four
installations creating a cluster of playful

July/August 2019 7
 higher-order cognition by exercising cognitive you come to realize that even a bench can be
flexibility, inhibitory control, and working morphed into something more exciting, like
memory. a puzzle that can support science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics learning. The
Community participation did not end with opportunities are limitless.
choosing the site location, needs to address, or
designs. We partnered with a local workshop Suggestions for Educators
that thrives on mentorship, training, and youth Playful Learning Landscapes thrives on
participation, and they organized an effort developing new activities steeped in the
for the community to literally build aspects science of learning and making tiny tweaks
of Urban Thinkscape. Over 100 youth were to established ideas. What if you replaced
involved. To conduct research on the impact of the hopscotch on your playground with one
Urban Thinkscape, we hired local community fashioned after a task that exercises body and
residents to be Community Data Ambassadors. mind? What if children were encouraged
The residents endured the rigorous training of to jump with only one foot where they saw
academic researchers and collected naturalistic two footprints,
observational data on Urban Thinkscape at and jump with
pretest and posttest, and at control sites. two feet where
they see one-
We found adult-child interaction and foot print? This
conversation increased about 25% from idea tweaks an
pre- to post-installation, and the instances existing and
of families using language in the intended popular activity
curriculum areas increased by 34%. This and merges it
project demonstrates the impact of merging with evidence on
architectural design and science that embeds how to develop
well-established activities for promoting children’s higher-
child-caregiver interaction via literacy, order cognitions
mathematics, scientific, and cognitive skills. to result in a
It also demonstrates the role that an active Playful Learning
community can and should play. Landscapes
installation.
Because of the success of Urban Thinkscape, in
terms of both research demonstrating improved Classrooms and child care programs stocked
child-caregiver interaction and relationships with colored paper and markers offer countless
with communities, our community partners opportunities for building temporary
in the neighborhood are leading the effort and Playful Learning Landscapes installations.
applying for large-scale funding to build new For example, our partners at the We Are
installations and structures. They are taking Play Lab in Switzerland created a mobile
the initiative to continue transforming their version of Parkopolis: The Human-Sized
neighborhood in ways that otherwise would Board Game for the Math and Sciences. We
be left to the slow-moving city government developed Parkopolis at a children’s museum in
operations. Similarly, the community is Philadelphia, which displayed it as a museum
continuing to request our science team to exhibit. Parkopolis provides opportunities
partner on smaller “pop up” Playful Learning for mathematics skills development through
Landscapes events and installations to continue child-led activities. The activities engage
energizing the neighborhood. children and caregivers with patterns by asking
children to find, repeat, or create patterns of
Once you recognize the potential of melding shapes or animals; numeracy by counting and
science and architecture in public spaces, completing simple math problems, and spatial

8 Childhood Education: Innovations

Photography by Sahar Coston-Hardy

skills and geometry by considering alternative jump. With a little guidance from a caregiver,
perspectives. The game also incorporates children may start integrating fractions into
measurement with fractions that are built into their active play.
the tiles on the game board and dice.
Conclusions
In advance of the museum exhibit, the We Join in the movement and explore how
Are Play Lab tested the ideas and activities you might fill mundane moments of life
of Parkopolis in summer camps throughout with exciting opportunities for families and
Switzerland. Using colorful non-slip mats as a children. How can we create beautiful spaces
gameboard, paper footprints, foam dice, and that have science built within? How can we
laminated game cards, the We Are Play Lab help caregivers solve interesting thought
created an extremely low cost and exciting problems with their children rather than merely
playful learning experience that prompted watching their children? Playful Learning
children to engage in math lessons in a fun way. Landscapes is a new vision that re-imagines
cities and offers increased opportunities for all
What about etching a number line with to do mental gymnastics in the public spaces
fraction tick marks on the sidewalk or blacktop they visit each day.
during recess? Children will naturally create
countless activities in front of a large number Visit: playfullearninglandscapesphl.org for
line, such as measuring how far they can more information and inspiration.

July/August 2019 9