#019 Why Do We Distrust Learning When It Looks Like Fun?

ISSUE #019 | WHY DO WE DISTRUST LEARNING WHEN IT LOOKS LIKE FUN

THE INSIGHT

Somewhere along the way, we started using seriousness as evidence of learning.

A child sitting quietly at a table looks like she is learning. A child concentrating on a worksheet looks like she is learning. But let that same child start laughing, moving, pretending, competing, or playing a game, and adults can begin to question whether anything productive is happening.

The research I read this week made me look harder at that assumption.

The important idea is not simply that children learn through play. We have heard that before.

The more interesting point is this:

What adults believe about play can change what children are allowed to experience.

WHAT THE RESEARCH TELLS US

One of my course readings made this connection directly. Caregivers who viewed play mainly as entertainment were described as less likely to provide play materials or encourage play than caregivers who understood its cognitive and social value. The same reading described children cooperating, setting goals, sustaining conversations, and building peer relationships through play.

Leggett and Newman found a similar divide among educators.

In their research, teachers changed roles depending on the setting. Indoors, they tended to see themselves as teachers. Outdoors, where children were engaged in freer play, educators were more likely to step back into a supervisory role. The authors argued that this helped create an artificial separation between play and curriculum—almost as if teaching happened inside and play happened outside.

That does not prove that adults consciously believe fun equals less learning.

That part is my interpretation.

What the research does show is that beliefs about play do not remain abstract. They can influence how adults organize environments, interact with children, and decide which experiences deserve time and support.

WHY IT MATTERS

That changes the question we should be asking.

Instead of looking at an activity and asking:

“Does this look educational?”

we may need to ask:

“What is the child actually having to do?”

A game might require a child to remember a rule, wait for a signal, stop a response, change strategies, cooperate with another child, handle losing, or try again after making a mistake.

None of those skills become less demanding because the child is enjoying herself.

And fun by itself is not proof of learning either. A child can have a great time without being challenged very much.

The point is that how an activity looks tells us very little about the developmental work happening inside it.

RESEARCH FOR THE REAL WORLD

Think about two children.

One is sitting quietly completing an activity an adult assigned.

The other is running through a game where she has to stop when a signal changes, remember which rule is active, avoid reacting too quickly, and adjust when another child does something unexpected.

Which child is doing the harder cognitive work?

You cannot answer that just by looking at which activity appears more academic.

This is one reason I think adults should start looking beneath the surface of children's activities.

Instead of asking whether an activity looks serious enough, ask:

What does this activity require the child to notice, remember, control, decide, or adapt to?

That gives us a much better picture of what the child may actually be practicing.

THE BIGGER QUESTION

If adults only trust learning when it looks like learning, how many valuable childhood experiences are we removing because they look too much like fun?

SOURCE

American College of Education. (2026). EC6023 theories and foundations of child development: Module 9. Culture, play-based curriculum, and scaffolding [Presentation]. Canvas.

Leggett, N., & Newman, L. (2017). Play: Challenging educators’ beliefs about play in the indoor and outdoor environment. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 42(1), 24–32. https://doi.org/10.23965/AJEC.42.1.03