Playing with change: insights and lessons from researching play during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic presented widespread disruption to our day-to-day lives and our ongoing and planned research projects at the PEDAL Centre. As the situation unfolded, it was necessary to rapidly adapt our projects to ensure continuity of work and delivery of outcomes. These adaptations were initially quick-thinking responses to huge challenges; however, upon reflection, it became clear that important lessons would be learned from these experiences. This paper uses the 6Cs framework (Golinkoff & Hirsh-Pasek, 2016) to describe what we retrospectively learned from adjusting our research programmes to the unprecedented COVID-19 circumstances. We illustrate how a ‘playful’ mindset and its characteristics were key to overcoming the challenges faced. Furthermore, we provide insights that can be considered as we move forward after the pandemic.