The Playful University Club’s January Monthly Meeting was hosted by Dr Pete King, the Programme Director for the MA Developmental and Therapeutic Play course at Swansea University. Pete’s professional background is in play and playwork, which he combines in his teaching and research. He led our January session, entitled “Using Playfulness in Teaching Research Methods in Higher Education”.

Pete is the co-editor of ‘Researching Play from a Playwork Perspective’ and ‘Further perspectives on Researching Play from a Playwork Perspective: Process, Playfulness, Rights-Based and Critical Reflection’, both with Dr Shelly Newstead. Pete also co-wrote ‘The Play Cycle: Theory, Research and Application’ with the late Gordon Sturrock. He is currently researching how playwork is coping during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This month’s meeting was a reflective consideration of playfulness and the three aspects of trait, disposition and creativity, and how it can be applied to teaching methods in research within Higher Education.

Pete King is passionate about playwork, and that certainly came across in his delivery of our January monthly meeting! Pete bestowed on us his philosophy of creating relaxed environments in the crucial first session with a new group of students and how play allows him to do this. The talk was adaptable – we played ‘guess who’ and ‘pointless’ on recommendation from the audience.

Importantly, Pete has also researched into the effects of playful teaching methods and his preliminary results suggest that playful content was more memorable, but that non-playful content was more helpful for examinations, demonstrating the need to integrate both playful and traditional pedagogy.

Thank you, Pete!

The Playful University Club aims to promote a culture that can foster play within the University by creating capacity for awareness, uptake, and exposure of play and playful learning. Ultimately, we aim to make the University of Exeter a place where learning is created and nurtured through joy, engagement and play, where learning to solve problems and overcome obstacles is a reward in its own right. The club hosts several activities each month including games nights and guest speakers. It is open to all University staff and Students and is a wonderful opportunity to support a compassionate community using play. If this is a YES for you, please email Maarten Koeners: m.p.koeners@exeter.ac.uk.