A dialog on reclaiming higher education as a space for play

Abstract

This work is the result of a collaboration between students and a teacher. Based on many hours of recorded dialogs and grounded in both our individual experiences from higher education and our shared experience in the interdisciplinary project course, we approach play in its broadest sense as an activity that combines exploration, discovery, experimentation, creation and reflection. Using the recorded dialogs as a starting point, we, collaboratively and in partnership, transformed the raw material into a coherent research narrative in which we explore why it is important to reclaim higher education as a space where students and teachers can play with ideas, what pedagogical approaches and positions are needed to create this space, and how a focus on efficiency and assessment threatens play in higher education settings. Keeping our work in the dialog format, we preserve the nature of this research and communicate the different voices.