“A Slow Revolution”: Toward a Theory of Intellectual Playfulness in High School Classrooms

Abstract

In this essay, Sarah M. Fine explores the misalignment between instructional practices in secondary classrooms and the interests and capabilities of adolescent learners.Drawing on a series of ethnographic cases, she explores the potential consequences of this misalignment and attempts to conceptualize an alternate reality in which high school classrooms could become places where cognitive rigor and deep engagement function as mutually supportive priorities. Fine theorizes that a promising path forward would be pursuing instruction that involves intellectual playfulness-a construct that marries open-ended problem solving with opportunities for risk taking and flow. These same cases, however, illustrate that this pursuit would require profound transformations in the policies, practices, and perspectives that currently dominate the field.

Teacher's perceptions of creativity and teaching creative thinking in the secondary school classroom: possibilities and tensions

“…Play is commonly ascribed to children, especially in the classroom: the messy classroom, students out of seats experimenting -and walls covered in artwork maybe music playing - (Fine, 2014). A popular misconception is that play centres on free expression and spontaneity (Robinson, 2011).…”

“…Even if there was time, some teachers feel uneasy about how to manage activities both in their production and behavioural expectations (Dadds, 2014) or they do not see the value (Eberle, 2014). Fine (2014), in her essay exploring how secondary classrooms can become rigorous and engaging at the same time, stated: "Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way that high schools tend to treat play, which, far from being leveraged into deep learning, is seen at best as peripheral and at worst as deviant," (p. 12). Such aversion to playful activities may call for pedagogies which can sustain rigour, engagement and playfulness in order to ameliorate negative perceptions.…”

Educating students for an outdated world

“…Nor did Max’s school have any focus on teaching 21st-century habits of mind, such as passion, curiosity, innovative thinking, imagination, mindfulness, perseverance, and empathy (Claxton, Costa, & Kallick, 2016; Duckworth, 2016; Engle, 2011). It would also be difficult to find in Max’s high school anything resembling what Sarah Fine (2014) calls “intellectual playfulness,” which she defines as “instruction organized around tasks that are open-ended in that they have many valid strategies and answers, absorbing in the sense of supporting immersive ‘flow’ experiences…punctuated by opportunities for social and/or intellectual risk taking” (p. 4).…”

“Appertaining to thy young days”: The End of the Academe in Love’s Labour’s Lost

“…Instead of "[…] muscling students toward mastery by tightly controlling the learning process", Fine asks educators to "imagine classrooms and schools where students were not only doing rigorous work but also being pleasurably engaged." 22 This plea for responsiveness to student interests is not new. Writing in 2009, educational theorist Walter Doyle called for "situated practice" as the basis for devising any curriculum.…”

“…The negative consequences begin with the teen girl's initial trauma of lost independence, but continue into an indefinite future. 22 What are students sitting in a classroom supposed to do about this perennial crisis? A classroom workshop could explore three linkages between Jaquenetta and current sociological theory.…”