Play, playfulness and gamification (PlaPlaGa)

Societies, organizations and individuals would benefit on more playful approach to the everyday encounters and to learning, education and wellbeing. Although playfulness has been studied from 1970's, its connection with higher education, teacher education and teacher work remain scarce. We investigate play, playful, gamified, and arts-based interactional processes in authentic settings, and consider individuals as embodily personalities. Participants in our studies include children, students, pre-service and in-service teachers in different environments. Environments refer to affordances that can be found for instance indoors, outdoors, nature, digital technologies, and FabLabs. We employ quantitative and qualitative methods, particularly participatory hands-on, mind-on and body-on approaches. The results are useful when developing educational programmes and their curricula, enhancing work life expertise in the field, and cultivating better pedagogical practices. In addition, the results are useful in guiding decision-making in the society.