Abstract
Photo of Douglas C. Orzolek by Mark Brown
Each semester, students in my courses fill out assessments of my teaching and the content of the specific class I am teaching. I find that the student feedback helps me to reflect on my efforts, further refine my approach, and rethink what facets of the class might need to evolve to stay in line with trends and other requirements. One consistent thread in the comments is the use of the word fun. Many students share that they had fun in the course and thought that I was a funny professor. I am proud of the fact that the students find my courses to be fun, and I hope I can continue to do just that in the coming years. For some, however, “fun” might imply that the learning was not serious enough for an academic setting or that there was some ulterior purpose. I have even had an administrator caution me that although a certain amount of fun is probably okay, I should be careful not to let it get in the way of learning.
I suspect many of you have had similar experiences. Music is often considered one of the fun things that happen in schools. Students are often drawn to our classrooms because they do not get to experience the same kind of fun during other parts of their day at school. I do not think we should apologize for the fact that music is fun, but I do think we should be careful with the use of that word given the connotations that get attributed to it in schools. As a result of my experiences, I have been using the words joyful and playful more often when I explain and describe what we do in our settings. Those terms seem to be a bit more attractive to my supervisors, and I feel that they more aptly define what is truly happening in my classroom.
Many thinkers remind us that our mood and emotional standing impact our capacity to learn. From our own literature base, Dr. Eunice Boardman reminded us that learning is very dependent on one’s emotional state and that our emotional state is connected to cognition. 1 What does this suggest to me? That it is very likely our students benefit from a classroom that is playful and full of joy, whimsy, wonder, and fun. Most of us will probably connect these terms with childhood and younger learners, but I would argue that these are the things that help us learn at any age. Educational theorist Dr. Morris Bigge agreed when he wrote: “We might come to think that childhood is not worthwhile in itself and that we must always be preparing for adulthood. Such thinking can have negative consequences.” 2 In other words, maybe the prevalent thoughts about fun in education derive from the fact that education is viewed as the primary way we prepare people for adulthood—and we all know that adulting is not always fun! In my opinion, education can certainly be about creating adults, but we should be using the best learning approaches possible—which includes the kinds of joyful and playful approaches that we may associate with our childhood.
I was fortunate to be invited to join the Fred Rogers Institute Educators’ Neighborhood this year. 3 It has provided me an opportunity to give more thought to how aspects of Mr. Rogers’s work—things like imagination, creativity, child-centered approaches, and of course, play—can further impact my own work. Any of my current and former students will tell you that Mr. Rogers has been an inspiration to my own thinking about joyful and playful teaching and learning for many years. His famous quote about play is something I reflect on often: “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” 4 This quote has really made me think about what we mean when we say things like “I play in the band” or “I play the guitar.”
“Play is not just about having fun, but about taking risks, experimenting, and testing boundaries.” 5 We have all seen quotes like this one, which comes to us from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Play has long been acknowledged as an important form of learning by many of our most important thinkers and scholars on learning, including Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Rogoff, Montessori, Goodall, and many others. Some of these thinkers were really interested in developing literacy or social skills in kids and saw play as a means to help kids develop their language skills. Some of them saw play as a way of supporting kids’ development as members of society. Even within our own field, thinkers like Suzuki, Gordon, Orff, Kodály, Dalcroze, and others speak to the role and the importance of musical play as a natural part of the learning process. A wonderful source for thinking more about the role of play in learning is the website of the National Institute for Play. 6 It provides additional ideas about how play can impact learning not just in our younger years but also well beyond them!
When considering what playful and joyful learning might look like in education, one of the challenges becomes defining it concisely. Harvard Project Zero’s document titled “Toward a Pedagogy of Play” aligns with the ideas of risk-taking, exploring ideas, and testing out theories and ideas with a focus on “delight, wonder, and choice” as a way to define playful learning. 7 The Lego Learning Institute suggests that “a critical requirement of play is that children must experience agency and be supported rather than directed. In playful learning, children are engaged, relaxed, and challenged—states of mind highly conducive to learning.” 8 Harvard Project Zero goes a step further to suggest that without play, “children are becoming passive spectators skilled at following directions.” 9 I think there is some truth to that statement, and again, I think music classrooms can play a role in developing people who are engaged in their learning rather than just watching.
Sometimes, it is easier to define something by stating what it is not rather than what it is. Dr. Anthony Pellegrini, University of Minnesota professor emeritus of educational psychology, has written several books on play and its role in human development, and he takes a pretty strong stance that in learning situations, play should be unstructured and not a part of teachers’ lessons. 10 He even goes so far to say that “play is for the playground, not the classroom. Play is not the same thing as making a lesson fun.” 11 He bases his argument on the idea that schools are far too product oriented and concerned with the gaining of knowledge or skills, whereas play is all about process without regard for an end-product outcome. During the school day, he suggests, break time and recess are the only times when students have “independent and unstructured play,” and he believes they are the only times students can learn social skills without any kind of adult interaction. 12 A recent National Public Radio story shares a similar viewpoint, and I encourage you to review that piece as you consider the role that play might hold for your classroom. 13
What does this mean for us in music education? I think we should stop apologizing for being the discipline of fun in our students’ school experiences. In fact, I think we should be celebrating it and sharing all the research and information we can about how our fun fosters learning that spawns curiosity, imagination, creativity, collaboration, and joy. I also think we should expand the research base for joyful and playful learning in music education, and I would encourage the profession to support funding for investigations in this area. I would also ask each of us to reflect on and perhaps define what playful and joyful learning looks like in our own classrooms. Reminding ourselves of how we came to music and music education as our chosen profession might be a good place to start. And finally, I think we should be looking for ways to collaborate and learn from our colleagues in other disciplines who are promoting this type of learning in their areas, too. In my opinion, when we speak to and focus on the special and unique kinds of learning happening in our classrooms, we are advocating for music education in the best possible way.
This will be my final column as the academic editor and chair of Music Educators Journal. It has been an experience filled with all sorts of learning and growth for me, and I deeply appreciate everyone who has supported me in this role. I wish to thank all the members of the Advisory and Editorial Committees, the staff at SAGE and NAfME, and of course, all those who submitted and contributed articles to help advance this journal. In particular, John Donaldson, Amy Quon, Amy Bradley, Corin Overland, and Lisa Diane Martin have been invaluable resources over these past years, and I thank each of them for their help. Ella Wilcox has been an amazing mentor, colleague, confidant, and friend to me during these years, and I wish her nothing but the best in the next phase of her career. Finally, I thank all of you for your confidence in me to serve in this role. I have truly enjoyed this experience. I’ve had a lot of fun!