22. Dr. Haeny Yoon and Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan -- Play, Conceptual Knowledge Development, and Literacy Skills

To the Classroom: Conversations with Researchers & Educators

My guests today are Dr. Haeny Yoon and Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan, researchers who study play in early childhood and adolescence. We talk about the many benefits of play, the role of adults in setting up and facilitating play, and ways that play supports conceptual knowledge development as well as reading and writing skills. Later, I’m joined by colleagues Emily Strang-Campbell and Gina Dignon, as well as longtime friend Alison Porcelli, former teacher and school administrator and now a district coach, who is a co-author of two practitioner resources: Purposeful Play and Boosting English Language Acquisition in Choice Time.

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Read a full transcript of this episode and learn more about the show

More on The Practice of Listening to Children: The Challenges of Hearing Children Out in an Adult-Regulated World

Mariana Souto-Manning and Haeny Yoon, Rethinking Early Literacies: Reading and Rewriting Worlds

Follow Dr. Haeny Yoon @Haenyyoon

Follow Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan @Elemveee

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Dr. Haeny Yoon is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Curriculum & Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is recommitting herself to the intellectual capacity and power of teachers to create, (re)imagine, and forward public scholarship and social change. As a former elementary school educator, she has always believed that when given the space, teachers can be engaged citizens who interrupt racism and multiple exclusions inherent in school curriculum, educational policies, and teaching pedagogies. She engages in research that studies how children and teachers create spaces of play or aesthetic experiences where creativity, social relationships, and civic engagement take precedence over standardization and regulation. She lives in New York City with her husband Neal and gets inspired daily by her niece and nephew, Emmy and Max.

Dr. Lalitha Vasudevan is Professor of Technology and Education in the Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Over the past 20 years, she has explored the intersection of adolescent literacies, media and technologies, youth culture, and juvenile justice. She engages participatory, ethnographic, and multimodal methodologies to study how youth craft stories, represent themselves, and enact ways of knowing through their engagement with literacies, technologies, and media.

Lalitha has conducted a variety of studies with court-involved youth. She has also explored the pedagogical practices of inclusive and special education teachers, the literacy and identity practices of middle school adolescents inside classroom settings, and the multimodal literacy and media engagements of adolescent boys. Lalitha has co-edited two volumes that explore the intersections of youth, media, and education: Media, Learning, and Sites of Possibility and Arts, Media, and Justice: Multimodal Explorations with Youth (both published with Peter Lang), and is currently writing a book about education, multimodal play, and belonging in the lives of court-involved youth.

Special thanks to Alex Van Rose for audio editing this episode.

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