Development of an Action Research Project on Collaborative Play by Teachers in Curriculum Planning


This case illustrates the Cycles and Epicycles of Action Research as it was experienced by someone learning to use the framework. The case is written to draw readers into the process, not to try to convince them that the framework works by cutting to the chase and describing some outstanding final outcome.

Novice Reflection | Paragraph Overview | KAQ | Evaluation Clock | Presentation Outline and Notes | Narrative Outline

Background and Motivation

When I first started this project, I had been working at a local community center as the multimedial instructor at a preschool/afterschool program, responsible for developing curriculum that integrated core subjects (reading literacy, number and math skills, science and nature, social skills, and cultural awareness) with technology resources such as computer software, web-based learning materials, and digital photo/video equipment. Each student was part of one of five groups, where groups 1-4 were preschool levels of representing ages 2.9 - 6 years old, and group 5 was an afterschool level representing ages 6 - 12. Before my arrival, no such multimedia instruction was included in the curriculum.

When I first arrived, I noticed that each of the 5 groups was somewhat independent of the other - one or two head teachers were responsible for a given group, and other than some very general monthly themes that were supposed to span across curriculums, teachers were generally independent in terms of how they planned activities for the students and were able to focus on the needs of the students in their own group. When a multimedia component was developed, I realized that my role was initially perceived as yet another independent grouping, that is, toward a learning experience that was relatively isolated from what the groups were doing in their group classrooms. At the same time, I saw that my responsibility was to introduce the tool of technology in a new way in support of what was already being done in the classrooms with the core subjects, not simply to teach "computers for computers' sake". This meant that my own teaching, lesson plans, and curriculum would need to use these technology resources as a means to another end - particularly school readiness (for the preschool groups) and reinforcement of school lessons and opportunities for creative expression (for the afterschool group).

Very quickly, I found that the idea of cross-group planning had room for expansion, and started to consider how the teacher planning process might be developed to create a culture of greater collaboration in planning and do so in a way that was more enjoyable for teachers rather than seem like another administrative meeting for a group of teachers who were otherwise faced with all of the demands of supervising and teaching young children. While I considered that the greatest need would involve the preschool groups, I also considered that I might like to pursue this idea to some extent with the afterschool group as well.

Because of my long-term interest and perspective on adult education, I finally decided that my own action research might involve the idea of the use of play in the teacher planning process. How could play be used to develop integrated lesson plans that represented the experience and needs of multiple teachers? What kinds of play would be acceptable to adult teachers in a formal setting of needing to decide and document classroom lessons and curriculum? How might the use of play in planning mirror the learning style and environment of the youth classroom? Within a short period of time in the action research process, I realized that I needed to settle upon a slightly more modest question, as those above contained a large assumption that play would already be a natural part of the planning process. Because of this, I started with process with an initial question of "In what ways might collaborative play be introduced into the teacher planning process?" I would focus on getting play to happen at all and leave its ultimate effect as a later concern. Could my personal actions, attitudes, and behavior translate into actually using some form of collaborative play in teacher planning, to what extent might this happen, and what forms of play might be manifested through this process?


Novice Reflection

Notes: at this stage in the course, I was coming to understand two particular aspects of the action research cycle. First, after relating the main stages of action research to my own work, I was starting to get insight into the idea of the process as a cycle - that is, I was able to let go of planning the entire scope of my project, realizing that I would need to evaluate the results of initial action plans in any case and therefore have future chances to revise - I did not need to think of my work with a single, monolithic result of high-level change. Rather, my planning now could aim to develop my actions as a collection of small steps rather than large ones. Second, I had just started to see far ahead enough to know that collaboration would become a part of my process in the form of comments and discussion with classmates. This understanding helped to motivate me to find small ways to test and explore my ideas about using play in the collaborative curriculum planning process - apart from insights that might directly help my own action research, the anticipation of collaborating with classmates nudged me to start to take action in my workplace, so that at the least I would have something substantive to share by the time I arrived at the class each week.

At this point in my CCT career, I feel that I have enough experience with the style of the program to have become much more comfortable and certainly even excited about our class sessions. I have developed a sort of mantra in my mind in preparation for any class session, consisting of the two following expectations:

oth of these expectations were met during my first experience with my novice experience in Action Research through exploring the issue of refreshments and snacks. At a few moments during our first two class sessions, I found myself cringing during a few times when another student expressed some anxiety about the specifics of an assignment in terms of “what has to be done” in terms of meeting the official requirements, such as the length of a paper. When I reflected on why such questions from others cause me to be a little uncomfortable, I found that my feelings stem from my own motivation to get past such logistical details as quickly as possible so that I can focus my attention to thinking about how to make the work as personally meaningful as possible.

A connection seemed to form between this realization and to some of the initial illustrations and descriptions of the action research process and to Professor Taylor’s explanations of the cycles and epicycles. Through our activity, I have started to see how our treatment of the refreshments issue provided an opening for my to more greatly explore why and how certain issues are most important to me. This did not mean getting things to be the way that I wanted, but it did have something to do with permitting myself to pay greater attention to my own motivations and wants during the process itself. Several times, I found myself doing what Schmuck referred to as “catching myself in the act of behaving”, which mostly occurred in the form of remembering past experiences with refreshments in previous class situations, most particularly in the ways that I thought our process for refreshments might have been better. I “caught myself” by noticing that my responses and questions in many ways reflected memories of past cases of handing refreshments. Had I not noticed this, I don’t believe that I would have then considered that my level of satisfaction about the refreshments was based on the more deep-seeded value of inclusion and sharing among class members (rather than nutrition, scheduling, or how to distribute responsibility).

As far as Schmuck also describes Action Research as involving what the research is doing personally and the way that the cycles are truly continuous by reflecting, planning, and evaluating change, I’m also starting to relate the compressed action research to my overall interests in adult learning. One idea for future exploration is my underlying motivation to improve my own lifelong learning because of the disappointment that I feel about the way that the potential of my formal childhood schooling was never met. In a way, many of the actions that I take now and perspectives of learning may be manifestations of me reacting to this unresolved issue of the past. Through the process of considering refreshments, the obvious thought that came to mind was that the process was helping to strip away more generic issues to discover the issues of refreshments with finer levels of granularity. The less obvious thought that emerged later was the idea that the process was also stripping away my own more generic interest in knowledge to uncover the finer layers of my personal interest in the issue. Schmuck discusses the levels of concern in research in which one focuses on self, then on others, then on results, and our activity reminds me that it is all to easy for me to skip directly to the focus on others.

Finally, the focus of our Action Research on improvement rather than correctness has helped me to become more inspired about how my thoughts might develop in my current work situation in which I develop educational resources and classroom activities for a preschool and afterschool program. Although my primary interest is in adult learning, I had decided to spend the current school year in childhood education, thinking that it would inspire some insight about what it means to enjoy learning and feel free about one’s natural curiosities and willingness to experiment in learning. In this work so far, there is constant planning of new ways to engage the students and evaluate and then reflect upon the results. Admittedly, I have occasionally worked through this process with the intention that I could eventually “get it right” and therefore not need to repeat the cycle, perhaps even seeming to indicate that I had failed at times. Through our initial classwork so far, I have started to change my mind and trust that this pattern is not only expected but a very positive indication that progress can happen in rewarding ways without concern for being “finished”.


Paragraph Overview

I would like to continue my ongoing exploration of adult learning and what it means for learners to include a greater sense of fun and play throughout the process. An emerging goal of this examination is to more clearly understand how actions that I take contribute to making a group learning opportunity more enjoyable and engaging others in play along with me. For an action research plan, I would like to consider the way that I approach my own behavior around personal learning opportunities with respect to the following “Core Actions”:

1. what actions I take to prepare myself for the upcoming learning opportunity: how can I use play to prepare for the learning opportunity?
2. what actions I take during the learning opportunity: how can I play while I’m actually involved in learning discussion and activities?
3. what actions I take to build upon the learning opportunity after it is over: how can I play during my reflection of the recent learning experience?

Although I am involved in a number of adult learning situations, I have found that one may be particularly useful as a reference point in thinking about collaborative play. In my work at a youth center, my role is to assist lead teachers by developing educational materials and activities for preschool (ages 3-5) and afterschool (ages 6-12) students. Specifically, I help the teachers to integrate multimedia and information technology into their lessons, since I am knowledgeable in that area, and the teachers are knowledgeable of the learning topics and goals of the students, and we must share and combine our knowledge to create activities that utilize both. I would like to explore in what ways I might define the Core Actions such that our planning interactions are improved, as these do not typically involve collaborative play.

Evaluation might include comparing a number of variables observed between the planning interactions that do and do not use collaborative play. These include the level of enjoyment experienced by myself and the teachers, whether or not humor is embraced into the planning process in a new way, whether or not teachers agree to engage in collaborative play, whether or not planned actions for collaborative play actually happened and why, whether or not the later learning experiences of the students were enhanced by through activities that were conceived through planning that used collaborative play, and whether or not my own and the teachers’ understandings of each others’ areas of expertise were deepened through the experience of collaborative play. Iterations through the action research process should then shape my “Personal Engagement Plan” - a practical recipe that I could use to guide myself into the actions that make the learning opportunity more playful for myself and others before, during, and after it takes place. Developing my constituency would then include the other teachers with whom I was working, administrators/directors of the center, the students who would eventually be influenced by the results of the lesson planning, and other educational supporters who might suggest ways of play that would enhance the process.


KAQ
What do we Know?
 Action: What could people do on the basis of this knowledge?
 Questions for Inquiry: What more do we need to know - in order to clarify what people could do or to revise/refine knowledge?
 How to Find this out?
-Children naturally engage in play in their learning
-Play involves deviating from the direct path from question to answer and requires experimenting, imagining, and having fun
 -Adults may take a point of view in learning that embraces curiosity, naiveté, and openminded exploration
-Seek out learning opportunities that are flexibly structured and involve understanding of ideas beyond just acquisition of skill
 What has other research/experience shown about how to embrace play in learning experiences?
 -Ask adults about which learning experiences they have found to be fun (and recall personal examples)
-Research examples of successful play in learning settings
-Using play in learning may help relieve tension about “being wrong” or “knowing the answer already”.
 -Play can be used at the beginning of a learning situation to help learners become more comfortable with each other and establish a safe, nonjudgmental environment.
-Learning situation can be explicitly structured as a forum of encouraging experimentation and even failure.
 In what ways does collaborative play improve learning? How does play influence the understanding that is sought in learning experiences?
 -Describe ways that collaborative play might be used and test in various learning situations.
-Review studies of types of play in learning.
-Reflect upon and keep a record of new understanding that I gain in the course of play.
-I have not frequently considered how direct actions that I take individually effect the collaborative play of learning.
-The actions that I take might actually influence the collaboration of the group in learning - this is not wholly determined by the “teacher” or the interpersonal dynamics of the group.
 -Observe actions that I take before, during, and after learning experiences.
-Create a specific plan to take action before, during, and after learning.
-Develop a learning environment that is student-, rather than teacher-, driven.
-In any learning experience, take on the role of “teacher” myself and guide others to engage in collaborative play.
 How do the individual actions that I take influence the collaborative play of the group?
 -Create a plan to take certain types of actions before, during, and after learning.
-Seek experiences in everyday life in which no “teacher” is defined and treat them as a “bona fide” learning opportunity.
-In my own role as a teacher or student, expose my intentions to play and make my experiments transparent, and observe reactions of myself and others.
-Factors beyond my personal control may influence the success of my learning.
-Adults in learning situations may not agree to collaborate or engage in play.
 -Set small-scale learning goals for play.
-Allow the meaning of “collaborative play” to be understood broadly and include many types of play.
 What might prevent me from taking planned actions in establishing collaborative play?
 -Record and observe how and why planned actions did not get done.
-Ask others to review my planned actions and provide explicit support or clarify why my actions may not be realistic.
-Play relates to fun in learning and might be observed through facial expressions, laughter, or direct verbal communication.
-Collaborative play means that multiple learners are engaged in the same activity of play.
 -Develop fun learning activities that are designed to be inclusive of all learners in a group.
-Notice that I am enjoying my learning through metacognitive reflection of my learning while it is happening.
 What do I need to observe in adult learning situations to determine when collaborative play is actually happening?
 -Consider the range of emotions and responses that I express during a learning experience.
-Note instances in which are adult learners are engaged with each other how their specific actions relate to their ways of communicating/involving others.
-There are organizing groups who already use the notion of play in learning.
-Several personal colleagues already express openness for play, including children in my afterschool/preschool and the CCT community.
 -Use my own teaching experiences (preschool) and student experiences (CCT program) to seek support and permission in play activities.
 Who are my potential allies, partners, or assistants in the course of designing, implementing, participating, and observing play?
 -Research groups/workshops that seek to provide practice/training in play in learning.
-Explicitly define different roles that supporters might take in play - observer, participant, idea-generator, etc.
-Theater principles help people to take on behaviors of other people with foreign/unfamiliar points of view.
-Theater principles help people to develop/imagine conceptual realities that are not as obvious to the everday authentic self (empathy).
-Theater involves a type of “game” of agreement between actors to temporarily accept the existence of a common fantasy situation.
 -Take theater classes to explore the notions of character, dialogue, and empathy.
-Engage in role-play.
-Invent ways of perceiving through another’s point of view and try them out during learning.
 What specific principles of the theater perspective might relate to allowing play to happen?
 -Create a Personal Action Plan that utilized theater exercises to prepare me for upcoming collaborative learning situations.
-Use theater methodologies to play with ideas or find humor in learning content, and employ these during the learning experiences and observe the results.
-Discuss and explore options with others already using integrated theater/education concepts.
-Lifelong learning may involve finding specific learning opportunities but also taking an attitude of recognizing long-term learning goals and needs.
-Collaborative play may encourage learners to take a long-term view of learning by relieving the “chore” of education.
 -Develop a long-term, continuous plan for what learning experiences one wishes to have.
-Find ways to focus on the play of learning with others primarily while considering learning outcome of be secondary at times.
 How does collaborative play support ongoing, lifelong learning?
 -Commit to developing a cycle of planning, implementing, and observing in my own learning.
-Ask other adult learners to reflect upon their lifelong learning wishes.
-Along with allies, develop a learner’s group for developing and experimenting with collaborative learning ideas.


Evaluation Clock

Notes on changes made from version 1 to version 2: while version 1 considered a scenario where some “naïve” participants were not told that research was happening, this version has been modified to allow that all participants are able to be aware of the project. This time, there are “direct” participants who are actively taking action to develop the use of collaborative play in teacher planning meetings, “indirect” participants who are part of the planning group but are not asked to take such actions, and “observers” who are not part of the planning group but openly observe the process and take notes that will be used for evaluating the results.

0a. The "change" (action/program/policy/curriculum/practice/treatment/difference/etc.) whose effectiveness needs to be evaluated is...

The practice involves taking action that will introduce the use of collaborative play in teacher planning in order to better prepare teachers to create more effective lesson plans and activities for students. My suggestion is that in situations when teachers have an opportunity to work together to create lesson plans and are structured to do so anyway, they use collaborative play as a methodology to help them 1) learn from each other's strengths and teaching styles, 2) develop lesson plans and activities that are creative in the sense that they involve combining ideas of diverse practitioners that might not be considered by one teacher doing own planning in isolation, and 3) they allow lesson plans and activities to be developed which exhibit greater continuity across different classes, since the plans would be reflective of multiple teachers and the process of creating them would allow teachers to become more aware of each other's goals and needs, which could help support consistent environments for students between different classrooms.

0b. Interest or concern in the effectiveness of the change arises because...

In many "collaborative" teacher planning meetings, I have noticed that this planning very often manifests in the form of a discussion, involving a cycle of brainstorming, evaluation, and decision, where the teachers themselves do not participate in direct experimentation but instead theorize "best practices" and then commit to lesson plans without further inquiry. Particularly in many of my past teaching situations, I feel that use of collaborative play would have helped me to learn and reflect more about what I was actually doing while allowing the practical work to get done.

1a. The group or person(s) that sponsors the evaluation of the change are...

I am the main sponsor within my own environment, which is too small for a statistically significant sample, but within a larger institution, the administrators/directors might be the main sponsors as they seek to improve the collaboration of teachers in the school or center.

1b. The people they seek to influence with the results are...

I seek to influence primarily the other teachers in my school environment (in my specific case, this might be the team of teachers responsible for planning toward youth education). A secondary influence would ideally occur with the students, who are the beneficiaries of the teachers who do use collaborative play.

1c. The actions/decisions/policies those people might improve or affirm concern...

The teachers might improve or affirm the need for scheduled and organized planning, the role of facilitation in teacher planning, and the allowance for developing ideas that need not always be fully worked out at the end of a specific planning session.


2a. General Question: The comparison needed to evaluate the effectiveness of the change is between two (or more) situations, namely a. a comparison of...

The two situations being compared are the teacher planning sessions in which no member of the group takes particular interest in collaborative play, and those sessions in which at least one person does take interest in collaborative play and attempts to integrate it into the planning approach.

b. with respect to differences in the general area of…..

In the latter situation in which some planning group members do advocate use of collaborative play, the main action to be considered, planned, and evaluated is the taking of steps that encourage collaborative play to happen. For example with my specific situation, I would consider what actions would I need to take before, during, and after teacher planning with certain groups, and I would not take such actions with the "control" groups. As well as the actual actions taken by teachers, another difference would be that some outside person or party would be present to observe the interactions of the teachers during planning and note observations that could be used to help the evaluation of collaborative play integration.

3. Specific observables: To undertake that comparison, the effects of the change will be assessed by looking at the following specific variable(s) in the two (or more) situations...

Across a large number of teacher planning groups, "control" groups would go on as always, and "treatment" groups would be the ones to utilize collaborative play. Within the treatment group, there would be "direct participants" who are actively involved in introducing collaborative play into the planning sessions, and then “indirect participants” who do not specifically plan for collaborative play. The direct participants would adhere to a set of common "collaborative play" actions that they would take before, during, and after teacher planning, and they would not necessarily reveal that they are doing to others in the whole group. At first, these collaborative actions might be developed in a common form by those actually implementing them, although it seems likely that the flexibility would be need to be allowed for them to evolve. The "before" and "after" actions would help the direct participant him- or herself prepare for and reflect upon collaborative play individually, and the "during" actions would involve more direct collaborative play while actually engaged in the teacher planning. Alternately, the treatment group might contain all direct participants and no indirect participants, meaning that the entire process would be transparent to all involved, and everyone would be taking the actions to invoke play. This might necessitate forming groups that don’t typically meet with each other for planning. In more “natural” planning groups, teachers in a same grade level or teaching a similar subject might typically meet, and in these cases, it might be realistic that only certain members of the group are open to acting as direct participants.

Variables would include the following:
1) The number of planned actions that were either taken or not taken by the direct participants
2) The expressions of acceptance or resistance made in response to the collaborative play actions "during" the teacher planning (as made by the indirect participants) in a planning group
3) Over time, the number of instances when indirect participants start to introduce collaborative play approaches themselves
4) Time spent and actions taken during periods of collaborative play, i.e., when experimentation of proposed learning activities is happening between teachers such that they are expressing enjoyment and finding freedom to explicitly and personally try the activities without expectation of specific results.

4. The methods to be used to produce observations or measurements of those variables are...(survey, questionnaire, etc.)

Methods would require that third-party observers take notes during teacher planning meetings and actually record the instances of the variables above. Part of the observations would be to note a quantitative count of instances of particular behavior as mentioned above, and part of the observation would be to provide a narrative account of the sense of play observed. In order to avoid creating anxiety of the teachers in the face of being "scrutinized" by the observers, the observers might have to be present in the role of being simply note-takers on the collaborative play experiment. Some observers would remain with the same group over successive planning sessions. Some observers would alternate between sessions either within the control groups, or within the treatment groups. Some observers would alternative between sessions and also between the control and treatment groups. In my specific case of teacher planning for example, I might ask for a center director of administrator to participant to join in under the role of a person taking notes on behalf of the rest of us.

5a. The people who will be observed/measured are...

The teacher groups will be observed, and this would include both the control and treatment groups. With the control groups, the observers will measure the same variables, determining when these things happen spontaneously, since those groups will not have any direct participants.

5b. The observing/measuring is done in the following places/situations... or derived indirectly from the following sources...

The observations will be made during the structured teacher planning meetings that have been previously established. Separate observations might be made in the form of individual interviews of the various teachers by one of the third party observers or by another administrator.

6. The observations/measurements will be analyzed to determine whether the two situations are significantly different in the following manner...

With respect to the variables above, variables 1,2, and 3 will be directly compared over several months of time to quantitatively determine whether collaborative play is successfully being introduced into the teacher planning. The final variable might depend upon a more qualitative analysis of how collaborative play seems to develop differently in control and treatment groups.

7a. Given that people who will interpret (give meaning to) the analysis are...

Those interpreting the meaning of the analysis might be school administrators and other teachers who are not participating in any collaborative planning groups.

7b. the analysis will be summarized/conveyed in the following form...

A summary will be created which indicates which of the "before","during","after" actions seem to be most closely related to the emergence of collaborative play. These will be made available to teacher and administrator groups who are developing future guidelines for planning sessions. Also, a summary of specific instances of collaborative play will be compiled as a resource for demonstrating to teachers different kinds of alternatives for ways of behaving in their planning.
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When the results are available, the following steps can be pinned down. In the design stage, you should lay out different possiblities.

8a. The results show that what has been happening is...

Possibilities include that the "before","during", and "after" activities each show some amount of influence on the increase in collaborative play used during teacher planning. For each level of activity, it is also possible that it shows no effect on the level of collaborative play, or even is shown to be detrimental to collaborative play. Results might be inconclusive altogether because of other factors not observed in the teacher planning, such as the influence of personalities or differences in interpreting "play" by the direct participants or observers.

8b. This will be reported through the following outlets...

This will be reported in institutional annual reports, new staff orientation materials, and individual meetings between teachers and administrators.

9. What has been happening is happening because...

Will be determined by the study, but one possibility is that collaborative play is shown to be possible in teacher planning and an acceptable use of time and effort, meaning that the school as a whole might become more willing to create the environment that allows play to happen and encourage all teachers to develop the "before","during", and "after" actions that are useful.

10. The lessons learned by sponsors of evaluation are that...

Lessons to be learned might include a deeper evaluation of why collaborative play does not happen more often, such as lack of time, feeling of apprehension, or lack of real and practical benefit. Also, the specific "before,during,after" actions might be appropriate only under certain circumstances and might need to be customized very specifically to each teacher planning group in a way that is appropriate. Future cycles of action research would likely pay great attention to the fine-tuning of the actions and even framing them in a way that allows them to evolve through the direct decision of the teachers actually carrying them out.

11. What the sponsors should now do differently is...

One possibility is that sponsors should consider how to expose the benefits of collaborative play mores teacher planning process and consider different presentations of these ideas as a way of allowing teachers to view them in ways that are most acceptable. For example, if certain teachers resist the very notion of "play" in a rigid way because they believe that it allows for silliness and makes them appear to not be serious about their work, the idea of play might be presented in alternate form, such as as "experiential planning".


Presentation Notes - How Will I Describe My Progress to Others Such That Effective Feedback Can Be Given?

Evaluation and Inquiry Stage:

When considering my own various experiences in adult learning, I have considered that most learning opportunities have a “feel” of work, meaning that the effort to participate fully is noticed, and there is some absence of play, experimentation, and enjoyment that might be a natural part of the process. Through my interest in collaborative play, I have wondered how I might take action to help establish a tone of collaborative play in learning opportunities and use collaborative play as a support system for allowing learning to be enjoyable.

In my background research, I have found a number of resources that describe notions such as what it means for adults to play or directions toward building collaborative learning opportunities for adults. I’m still working through these, but the ones that I have read show a general consistency in suggesting that play can be a valuable way for adults to engage with learning. One definition of play is the following: “Play: state of being that is intensely pleasurable. It energizes and enlivens us. It eases our burdens, renews a natural sense of optimism…”. Many descriptions of play that I have found are similar in the way that they describe play without really defining it in a completely concrete way.

Reflection and Dialogue Epicycle:

In my own learning experiences, I have noticed that many of them have taken the form of proposing a specific goal and then indicating the path to be taken to reach that goal and then taking that path and reaching the goal. I considered that when I most enjoyed learning, there was an element of play in the situation in which I was allowed to deviate from that path and spend time on an activity which had an uncertain outcome. In a simple example, I recall a high school math teacher asking us students to try to figure out how to use a graphing calculator. There was no answer sought, just an expectation that we would discover something of use along the way. In another example, I took a continuing education class in beginning piano. The teacher interrupted the lesson to ask us to think of a song that we liked. She then asked us to try to find the correct notes to the beginning of the song on the piano keys, even when we had not yet learned note names. In both of these situations, we played. After reflecting upon this, I considered that in my ongoing adult learning settings, I might be even more rewarded if the play was collaborative – if the learners were all playing in this way but doing so in a coordinated way which we had a shared experienced that supported the development of a relationship between learners, beyond the more isolated play of the examples above. By playing, I found a very satisfied feeling from the idea that I had actually created some knowledge for myself, not simply given it directly or even prompted to find it from an external source.

Proposing and Planning Actions Stage:

After starting with a more general idea about taking action to add collaborative play to adult learning, I found new meaning during a period of much struggle and uncertainty about the purpose of my ideas. My thoughts were that play could serve as the mechanism for creating an alternative in learning to any structure that was imposed upon a group of people. In other words, play could serve as a legitimate way to support the learning itself while allowing the learners to break free from the structure that had been placed on the situation or that they had adopted for themselves. Further, I was having difficulty in defining how collaborative play could be generally placed into a situation, so I had to change my overall framework of thinking. Rather then figuring out how to build collaborative play into “any” learning opportunity as a functional action, I started to see that what I wanted to happen was for myself and other learners to simply become more sensitive to times in which play could be used to break up the structure of the learning and restore a sense of fun in learning, when appropriate. In other words, I recognized and acknowledged that I did not want to figure out how to increase the collaborative play in any situation. Instead, I realized that my hope for collaborative play was that it could be understood by learners to be an option for their style of learning at a particular time and develop the capacity to recognize this and use it. I started to understand that a slightly more narrow approach to my own action research was in order, so I renewed my focus on the specific issue of planning classroom lessons with other teachers at a preschool/afterschool center where I work. This seemed to be a natural match, since we were tasked with collaborating in order to create lesson plans and activities for students that were enjoyable for them and allowed them to play. Meanwhile, I observed that we were never really playing ourselves in the journey to accomplish this.

The general course that I took to create a plan for action took the following form.

Overview of project:
• use of collaborative play as a way to enhance learning experience for adult learners
• play = activity that has uncertain outcome which encourages experimentation, surprise, humor, and personal enjoyment
• collaborative play = play that is done by group of people in the same learning experience, such that their actions are interdependent – an act of a person during collaborative play may be a response to that of another or a prompt to further action

1. Initial thoughts
a. My interest in adult education focuses on lifelong learning and what it takes to encourage myself and other adults to develop a positive view of ongoing learning, engage in learning with a spirit of enjoyment, curiosity, and excitement, and consider how learning with others can be rewarding and create change, while at the same time taking many forms that may not be available in traditional classroom settings or educational institutions
b. First considerations – how to create an action research plan in which collaborative play is introduced into adult learning settings such that it results in an enhancement of the learning experience. Issue: could this “enhancement” be a quantifiable property?
c. Next steps – I considered what it might mean to use myself as a guinea pig in my action research. The change that I would be introducing would focus on actions that I would take, I would inquire into the way that I have been acting and how others have approached this question, and I would then evaluate the change based on my own actions and those of others.
d. Primary action research idea: - I would focus on how to develop a “Personal Engagement Plan”. This would be a recipe for actions that I would take relative to three periods when encountering a learning opportunity. The idea is that prior to an upcoming well-defined learning opportunity, I would be able to create a customized Personal Engagement Plan with “before”, “during”, and “after” actions that I could take and then actually carry out the actions that encouraged the use of collaborative play. Evaluation would be based on determining whether or not a certain result was noticed to be different between situations that involved collaborative play, and those that didn’t.
e. Emerging idea – I would focus on using my own work as a teacher to help think about how to create a Personal Engagement Plan. In my work with a youth education program, I am responsible for helping teachers develop curriculum and lesson plans for preschool and afterschool students that involve using multimedia and information literacy (primarily using computers as tools for these). The lead teachers are responsible for a level of student based on age, and this is then associated with learning goals that reflect certain subjects (reading, math, creativity, etc.). I am knowledgeable about the multimedia resources, and teachers are knowledgeable about the core topics. Neither of us understand very well each others’ areas, so we must work together to create integrated activities and lesson plans for the students that account for both. Based on this need, I considered that area for possible collaborative play was in the way that I and the other teachers could learn from each other and collaborate to plan for the activities for the students. Drawing upon the notion of collaborative play, how could I create a Personal Engagement Plan that would help to make our planning sessions more successful?

Constituency Building Epicycle:

In the development of this plan, I have been noticing that the constituency building process has evolved somewhat naturally from the requirements of the plan itself. Primary constituents include the teachers and directors at the youth center and the students themselves. Secondary constituents include others who might observe the play that is happening in the planning sessions and those assisting me to develop the ideas for play that can be brought to the group.

A few practical areas in which this might be used realistically in the near future:
1. Preschool – upcoming planning to develop a science activity fair with the teachers to engage the kids to gain a sense of wonder and excitement about science and space
2. Afterschool – upcoming planning to develop a project that would engage the kids in creating a digital story of their personal lives

Implementation Stage:

Example of a possible Personal Engagement Plan:

To be clear, the focus is collaborative learning during the lesson planning process with teachers, not during the actually carrying out of the lesson plans with students. The following activities are those that would be done by me relative to these planning sessions.

“Before” activities:
1. observe students at play in a classroom during a more unstructured time and note specific instances in which play seems to lead to inquiry or insight
2. ask teachers for a list of possible topics that will be addressed in their classes within the following weeks
3. build a simplified prototype of a game or fun activity that might be used during a student lesson
4. find one joke, humor article, comic strip, or interesting image that is directly relevant to topics at hand or teaching
5. find a “toy” that might be relevant or interesting to the teachers

“During” activities:
1. present the joke/comic/etc. to the group
2. briefly offer the “toy” (#5 above) to the teacher group during planning and ask them to “test” it for use with the students
3. mention to the other teachers that I intend to approach our planning from a playful point of view, meaning that I would like to play with any idea before judging its value or making a decision based on it
4. make a suggestion to teachers that we play with the prototype game “as if” we were the students, and then do so if possible
5. write down suggestions made by the teachers on how to improve or clarify the game
6. ask teachers (and myself) to reflect upon the personalities of individual students and tell a story about times when they seem to be having fun
7. brainstorm ideas for an alternative game that might be developed

“After” activities:
1. make suggested changes to the prototype game
2. create additional prototype games as suggested, as possible, and present these in future planning sessions
3. make an entry in a reflective journal that describes particular moments of play between myself and the other teachers

Evaluation and Inquiry Stage:

As a matter of practical evaluation of the plan, I start with a type of checklist of outcomes. The questions below highlight issues that might be changed through the introduction of collaborative play, and these generally whether or not a specific change can be observed after collaborative play has been used.

Outcomes to be measured:
Possible evaluation would occur by answering the following questions:
1. Did the other teachers explicitly agree to engage in play or be open to the idea?
2. Did I experience a level of enjoyment beyond the norm for teacher planning sessions?
3. Did any other teachers express that they were experiencing enjoyment during the planning session?
4. How many times was laughter elicited during the planning session?
5. Did all of my planned actions in my Personal Engagement Plan actually take place? If not, what prevented it?
6. Did the teachers and I form a concrete lesson plan for a specific period of time?
7. Did the number of interactions between the teachers and I increase between the planning session and the following one?
8. Did my understanding of the teachers’ original intentions for lesson topics become more clear after the planning session? Did their understandings of my resources become more clear?
9. Over time, do the other teachers take any more initiative at bringing/suggesting new ways of play into the planning sessions?


Narrative Outline

From Personal Action to Collaborative Play: Creating a Personal Engagement Plan for Adults that Creates a Rewarding Group Learning Experience

I. Introduction: My Perspective on Adult Learning and the Value of Play
(ties into: Evaluation of my own past scenarios, Inquiry to Illuminate the Background, Reflection)

In my own experiences in adult learning, I have become particularly interested in the idea that play may be used as a tool that might enhance the learning process by opening up the possibilities of _experimentation_ in learning. I consider this to be an important part of the learning process such that it may, when used at appropriate times, remove the boundaries of "right" and "wrong". When this happens, an opportunity for learning occurs that provides space for novel or "strange" ideas to be considered; this may not happen if learning activity is purely goal-driven, since that may require that such novel ideas are ignored if they do not directly or obviously relate to the goal. Further, if play happens in a collaborative way, this means that learners may be performing the same experiments together, finding ways to enjoy the experience, and increased sharing between them. I will reflect upon learning experiences of my own in which collaborative play did happen and work effectively as well as some that lacked such play but that might have shown a benefit from having it. Also, I will describe some initial assumptions that I made at the start of the action research.

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the Introduction provides motivation and rationale for wanting to engage in the project and follow through on exploring the Background
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II. Background Wisdom from the Minds and Experience of Others
(ties into: Inquiry to Illuminate the Background, Dialogue)

I will summarize my review of the literature concerning the ideas of others regarding the meaning of "play" and "collaborative play" and consider how they have been defined and related to the childhood and adult worlds of interaction. Because no single idea of play claims to be the most useful or only correct one, I will present some themes that emerge from comparing a variety of perspectives on play, and note some key contrasts. Further, I will provide some example cases of the use of play in learning situations that primarily involve adults.

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the Background uncovers aspects of play as more legitimate, concrete, and realistic part of adult interaction, which suggests that change is possible in my Current Situation
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III. My Current Situation and the Need for Change
(ties into: Evaluation of my current situation, Dialogue, and Constituency-Building)

I will describe the target setting of my role as a curriculum developer and teacher in a preschool program, where I need to work with a group of core preschool teachers to develop lesson plans and activities that both integrate multimedia and help meet learning standards for the students (such as literacy and science awareness). The area for change focuses on this teacher planning process itself and how collaborative play might be included in the process and used more effectively as a tool to enrich our planning, with an inner-most constituency group being these teachers.

Two central issues surround the planning process. One is that I have specialized knowledge (multimedia, technology, and information resources) and the teachers have specialized knowledge (educational standards for preschoolers and more personal knowledge of the students themselves). In order for planning to become more effective, we must learn from each other's knowledge and experience so that our plans account for all of it as much as possible. Another central issue is that planning has traditionally occurred in the form of a "decisional discussion" - a general discussion that aims to simply find agreement on a decision about what activities to use in the student classes. This means that there currently is no play between the members of the teacher planning group, even though we are attempting to create learning experiences for the students that involve high levels of play. In typical teacher planning so far, we have not really tried activities ourselves or even imagined "out loud" how they might work. My action research plan will focus on what actions I may take that can introduce the possibility of collaborative play into the teacher planning. This will be a primary area of interest in my current project.

Future cycles of action research cycle might then seek to refine how the change takes place:
• Phase 2: how to do this in such a way that the collaborative play that happens actually increases the mutual cross-learning between teachers
• Phase 3: how to do this in such a way that the collaborative play, that leads to mutual learning, also leads to more playful and well-defined student lesson plans and activities
• Phase 4: ....leads to increased engagement/enjoyment of the preschool students themselves

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along with having deeper understanding of my Current Situation with respect to desired outcomes and options for achieving them, knowledge of the Background helps to point toward a path of action through the development of an Action Research Plan
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IV. Developing an Action Research Plan for Change: The "Personal Engagement Plan" in Defining How Personal Action Relates to Increased Collaborative Play
(ties into: Proposing and Planning {what actions}, Implementation {strategies, logistics for action})

I will describe an idea for how to plan my actions and suggest how others might do the same across an imagined larger system of teacher planning throughout a school. My main idea is that I would create a "Personal Engagement Plan" for myself. This would be a list of actions that I would plan to take before, during, and after a teacher planning session that I propose might help to introduce collaborative play into the planning process. "Before" actions might include those that might help me to individually develop a playful attitude ahead of time and prepare materials that might be used in playful planning. "During" actions might include those that directly communicate suggestions for play to other teachers during planning and those that lead to planning activities that are themselves playful in a way that matches appropriate with the current interactions of the planning session. "After" actions might be those that allow me and others to reflect on our play and collect feedback from the observers of teacher planning.

Part of the Personal Engagement Plan will certainly require me to make attempts to define actions in the first place that I think are likely to lead to collaborative play, so I will also discuss how I might think about this. The actions might draw upon my own direct teaching and learning experiences as well as perspectives related to life experiences, such as some of my recent training in theater and kind of play that happens in sports and games.

Further, because the Personal Engagement Plan starts with myself but includes many others, I will describe how my I imagine the growth of my constituents to work over time, with respect to direct participants (myself and the other teachers), indirect participants (preschool administrators and preschool students), and allies (teachers in other schools, playful people, idea-providers, Action Research class colleagues). This description will include how I might ideally frame the constituency in a holistic way, such that I am able to offer support to constituents as they do so with me, and such that communication/relationship-building might occur not only between me and individual constituents and constituent groups, but between constituents themselves. Because collaboration and play lie at the foundation of the change that I envision, constituency-building will also involve specifically seeking out skeptical people who can help me to consider objections to the use of collaborative play or areas in which play in general might be met with resistance.

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reflecting on the Development of an Action Research Plan, helps to uncover a starting point of actual small- and medium-scale actions that I might employ as a first attempt of a Personal Engagement Plan
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V. Example Personal Engagement Plan
(ties into: Implementation, Reflection, Constituency-Building))

Because the Personal Engagement Plan is the primary vehicle for supporting the actions taken to create change, I will provide a suggestion for an initial plan while considering how this might work in my own situation, as well as proposing how it might also apply to an imagined situation in a larger environment where multiple teacher planning sessions might be happening, where collaborative play is sought not only as a tool for in-group teacher planning but also as a new element of school/institution culture. I am now considering that My own Personal Engagement Plan might involve the integration of several elements: 1) lists of "before", "during", and "after" actions that I take, 2) conditional statements/priorities that regulate when certain actions need not or may not be taken relative to a particular teacher planning session, and 3) time-based and systems-thinking considerations that influence overall implementation of the actions, i.e., does implementing a given action disrupt some other part of the system of the preschool that otherwise appears to exist outside of teacher planning sessions?

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the perspective of a concrete Personal Engagement Plan suggests how change may be measured through the specific guidelines of a explicit Evaluation
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VI. Evaluation of the Personal Engagement Plan
(ties into: Evaluation, Dialogue, Constituency-Building)

Consideration of the Personal Engagement Plan will also include description of how this can be evaluated. Because collaborative play might not be equally meaningful or perfectly well-defined across all teachers, evaluation will depend not only upon my own reflection but also on feedback/commentary given directly by other teachers, notes on observations made by third-party observers, and other quantitative and qualitative measurements of my own and others' behavior both during and outside of the teacher planning sessions.

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the results of the Evaluation will may help to refine the Personal Engagement Plan not only in terms of specific actions but also in terms of how all of the specific actions work together, and revised actions may then propel the action research toward Future Cycles
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VII. Imagining Further Iterations of the Action Research Cycles
(ties into: Evaluation, Inquiry {unanswered questions related to Personal Engagement Plan})

The primary focus of the action research during the first phase will be to introduce collaborative play into the teacher planning process in some form, as a way of discovering which actions that I take might catalyze the collaborative play interactions that take place. This not only means injecting "instances" of collaborative play into the formal teacher planning sessions, but also hopefully taking the actions that help to establish that the overall environment allows for collaborative play where it might even become more spontaneous outside of the formal planning. Future directions of the action research might then address the types of implied changes that are suggested under Phase 2, 3, 4, and beyond, as mentioned previously under the "Current Situation" section.