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In a room full of excited children, six-year-old Annabelle Howard is deeply engrossed in play. She and her father, Harry, have been invited to a product-testing session to try out a new playset from the LEGO^® group. But this one is different from the sets the company is known for. Rather than just following instructions to build a gadget, or playing freely with bricks, Annabelle has been presented with a problem to solve: can she save an animal by inventing something to see it safely across a gorge? Meanwhile, 14 other children in the room are happily formulating 14 different responses to the same challenge.�� “The beauty of it is that there is no right answer, it’s your answer,” says Harry. “Every single child in that room came to a solution. I didn’t hear a single tantrum or, ‘I can’t do it’.”

What made this challenge so effective and engaging is that it has been engineered by LEGO’s designers to tap into the fundamental mechanisms of how children’s brains learn through play. Neuroscientists and developmental psychologists have spent decades identifying these mechanisms, which are vital for helping children develop the cognitive capabilities they need to thrive in the 21st century.

Brain sculpting

Research in animals suggests that play is a powerful brain-sculpting force that operates at every level, from genes to cell biology to behaviour. In rats, for example, play refines the neuronal connections in an area of the brain known as the medial prefrontal cortex, which is involved in coordinating movement and is key to helping the animal interact socially with other rats. Play also stimulates the production of signals known as growth factors that boost neuron development and survival, and even short bouts of rough-and-tumble play in rats can markedly alter gene activity in several areas of the brain.

While these findings help us understand how rats learn through play, extrapolating them to children is not easy. Human play is hugely complex and variable, and neuroscience studies of children are scant, says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Temple University in Philadelphia and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. “Our measures of brain stuff in kids is not as sophisticated as the behavioural measures yet,” she says. “We can’t pinpoint a [brain] area for you right now and say, ‘This should light up in play’.”

Cognitive boost

Instead, developmental psychologists like Hirsh-Pasek rely on behavioural studies, noting how children’s cognitive abilities are affected after the introduction of a particular factor, such as playing with blocks. And what these show, she says, is that the defining characteristics of play are also the components of how human brains learn. Children learn best when they are active participants, rather than passive recipients; when learning is engaging and meaningful, in that it makes connections between new knowledge and things a child already knows. They also learn when the process is socially interactive, and when it is “iterative”, allowing the child to repeatedly generate and test hypotheses. Finally, and importantly, children learn if they find the experience joyful.

These conditions are all met in a kind of play called guided play, where an adult sets the goal of the learning, but children have freedom and agency to explore. For example, child psychologists have studied how primary-age schoolchildren tackle maths problems. One option is to teach the children how to solve problems first. But it turns out they are better at solving new problems when they are able to explore different possible solutions before being taught how to tackle them. And four- and five-year-olds build more complex block structures and interact with each other more in a guided play rather than a directed play situation. “If we could teach in the way that human brains learn, then children would learn more,” says Hirsh-Pasek. She is currently working with LEGO Education in the US on a project to coach teachers in “active playful learning” (essentially, guided play) in classrooms.

Creative innovation

This “active playful learning” is in stark contrast to the didactic, instruction-based learning taking place in most schools. And it helps develop skills that children will need to thrive in the modern world, says Hirsh-Pasek. These skills are collaboration, communication, content or knowledge creation, critical thinking, creative innovation; and finally the confidence to learn through failure. So unlike traditional education that rewards rote learning, play cultivates flexible, creative thinkers who generate original ideas, ask better questions, and bring human empathy to their work. “If you want to outsmart robots, then you need a suite of skills that isn’t just memorisation,” says Hirsh-Pasek. And active playful learning is not just for children. “It works no matter how old you are,” she says. “I’m seeing it work in college.”

Back in the product test, the children have created a wealth of inventive solutions for their animals: ladders, bridges, even zipline carriages. The challenge was Annabelle’s favourite part. “It was now about interacting with that environment with your own free will,” says Harry. “I think it’s really fundamentally important that we challenge our children like that in a safe environment. And, that they get used to the fact that the answer is not always going to be given to them.”

Find out more about LEGO Education’s new STEM sets at:

I wonder how this works?

Research into how children’s brains learn is at the heart of the design behind LEGO Education’s new “build-solve-invent” sets. Each starts with a science-related theme that sparks a child’s curiosity, such as how a reindeer’s fur changes with the seasons. Then the build presents a problem that the child has to solve. And finally, in the third stage, a child can invent something entirely new.

Curiosity gap

The crucial point is sparking curiosity—creating what is generally known as a “curiosity gap” that draws learners in with questions such as, “I wonder how this works?”, says Bo Stjerne Thomsen, head of educational impact at LEGO Education and a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab. This uncertainty activates a system of connected brain regions known as the salience network, which detects important stimuli that need attention. This then interfaces with two further brain systems: the default mode network, where imagination and reflection happen, and the executive function network, where focus and problem-solving reside.��

��Traditionally, education jumps straight to problem-solving—the executive function network— but effective learning needs all three networks working together, says Thomsen. “Essentially, we’re trying to make that a flow of how you use the whole brain, says Thomsen. “If you don’t activate the full brain, the brain will not consolidate that knowledge.”