Reflections from the higher education classroom: the role of playful pedagogy in the professional formation of early childhood students

This paper reports a small-scale qualitative inquiry in the discipline of Early Childhood Studies in Higher Education that explores how playfulness in pedagogy might create an environment in which people within the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector (including students) engage in dialogue about structural injustice. Participants in this study are 14 people (students, lecturers and people working for professional associations, trade unions or grassroots organisations) who attended a networking event hosted in a university classroom in March 2023. Data was collected through lecturers’ reflections on pedagogy and online semi-structured interviews that explored participants’ experiences. We found that adopting a playful pedagogy both created opportunities for resistance to injustice and disrupted hierarchies in the ECEC sector. Playfulness in the HE classroom supported collective expressions of professionalism in the form of solidarity and voice.