Playposium Presentation: Casey Meehan, Playing with Fire
Channel: Professors at Play
Date: 2020-11-20

Casey Meehan, PhD, Director of Sustainability and Resilience,Western Technical College and Associate Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse presents,

Playing with Fire: Framing Principles of a Playful Pedagogy for Teaching and Learning About Serious Things.

Climate change, COVID-19, systemic racism. These are serious topics. To paraphrase the late, great Bernie DeKoven, we ought to approach such weighty topics playfully precisely because they are so serious. Indeed, research on play suggests that it fosters the behaviors and habits of mind we need in order to respond to such topics: bravery, creativity, empathy, problem-solving. But what underlying characteristics of a more playful pedagogy? Think of this session less as a game of Trivia Pursuit and more like a giant inflatable bouncy house where we can bounce ideas around.

Find out more: professorsatplay.org