Pretend Play & Math

Pretend play is a really, really old way of practicing hard core dangerous skills. 

"I'm gonna get you and gobble you up!" says the father as he feigns a growl to his two year old son. The child squeals in delight and says, "do again, do again, do again." It's chase play, and it's the oldest form of pretend play in mammals. And, one more thing: it's a super-powerful mechanism for learning the very most important skills of survival (Owens, S.). Chase play is practice for the real thing, practicing predator evasion. A child and a father, without knowing it, are training the skills to "get away from that big lion, big bear, whatever." 

It seems like this can't be true. We don't have lions in our daily life, but that is only very recent in the scope of the history of humans, following the agricultural revolution and new types of weapons and habitat takeover. For most of human history and all of mammalian history, perhaps as much a sixty-million years, humans have been shaped by an environment that required escaping predators. I promise you'll almost laugh out-loud the next time you say, "I'm gonna eat your toes," to a smiling infant.

But what's incredibly compelling is that by understanding chase play and its purpose, we can also understand why pretend play exists in the first place and what it really does for learning. Chase play is the highest stakes play there is, and it teaches us that people learn best in environments where they feel safe are able to try new things where the consequences are low, even though the real environment is dangerous. As one of the highest forms of learning, pretend play allows us the freedom to test hypotheses in a low stakes environment so we don't suffer.

The phenomenal part is that this seemingly "loosey goosey" approach to learning leads to the best results in the real environment. Even in situations of the very highest stakes, life or death in the case of chase play, it's the risk free environment of "pretend" that leads to the most efficient learning. This is profound for helping us structure the learning environment for students. 

It seems to me that the average middle-school student normally has very few opportunities for truly deep play in math, and it's my belief that we need more than just small "quickie" games to get them immersed. Rich, thoughtful, pretend worlds fundamentally allow for practice of crucial skills, and I've seen this happen in math class with positive results.

And, because the learning space is about having some gentle consequences (i.e.- as a consequence you can indeed be caught in chase play) where the net effect is small (i.e.- you can start over), it's one of many reasons why I recommend a "complete" or "do-again" approach to grading, at least in any time you are a learning mode (often called formative assessment mode). Contrast this approach with the heavier consequences of a score, which seems to inhibit play, and thus deep learning.

Despite it's apparent pitfalls and counter intuitive nature, 60 million years of mammalian history shows us that this kind of low-stakes play in math should result in students choosing their best strategies when they are in the high stakes environment of testing. At least in my experience teaching in public schools, it's true (see results).

-Scott Laidlaw, Ed.D. 

Director, Imagine Education