| Summary: | Engaging students while providing them with the necessary linguistic and critical skills as a foundation for further exploration are the principle challenges for those of us who teach disciplinary introductory courses. My own response to this challenge has been to develop and implement what I refer to as the ‘pedagogy of play.’ Informed by the work of bell hooks, G.H. Mead, and J. Huizinga, the pedagogy of play is grounded in the notion that an orientation toward ‘play’ and ‘playfulness’ provides the framework for developing curricula and teaching practices that emphasize learning as process rather than outcome. This paper outlines the principles of a pedagogy of play and describes one of the quintessential examples of this approach:“Lego Day(s),” a strategy I developed to provide students with a concrete context in which the abstract concepts ‘culture’ and ‘society’ could come to life.
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