Since its inception, The LEGO Foundation has aimed at and worked towards molding the builders of tomorrow. Through various effective and innovative methods, they have succeeded in bringing about significant change in how children are brought up around the world. On February 26, the CEO of The LEGO Foundation, John Goodwin, shed some light on the work they aspire to do, at hotel Le Méridien, Dhaka. Goodwin was formally the executive vice president and the chief financial officer of The LEGO Group till April 2017. Conducting the insightful conversation was Zafar Sobhan, Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
Tell me a little bit about The LEGO Foundation’s mission, its philosophy, and its play-based learning.
The LEGO Foundation’s vision is to redefine play and reimagine learning. We feel that it’s really important as, in many parts of the society, play is considered to be the discretionary item that children do when all the important stuff is completed. But according to the neurological sciences, play is the work of children; it is the way in which they are able to assimilate the world around them, and it is proven to be one of the key ways in which children develop neurologically. So, within the foundation we are looking to really ensure that society totally understands the importance of play.
There has been a lot of talk and research out there on modes of education you see around the world -- more so in a country like Bangladesh -- that are really old fashioned and don’t really reflect what we now understand about how children learn and the kind of education they need to succeed or flourish in today’s world. What is your opinion regarding this?
Knowledge retention is becoming less and less critical for us to make progress. The importance of developing creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving is imperative. All these skills make us uniquely human and are in such demand in today’s work force. That is why, we believe we need to reimagine how we are thinking about education systems and learning, and make sure the children get the opportunity to truly develop the skills -- the skills they will be using throughout the whole of their lives. Particularly when you think about the fact that the average life expectancy is increasing in most parts of the world, the concept that we only have a short period of time to learn and educate and impart all the knowledge we need into ourselves and somehow will sustain us for the rest of our lives, is very antiquated. We want to create life-long learners.
Tell us a little bit about how you operate and what your motives are in terms of advancing your agenda.
Our objective is to systemically reach children with learning through play, so what we want to do is work in different areas around the world in order to figure out how to create that change in the adults who are around children, and equip them with the capabilities to enable children to learn through play. We do that through a series of initiatives we have set up and, in each initiative, there are three components. One component is to conduct research and generate evidence around how to do the implementation and the impacts it has on children. The second element is around programmatic designs -- how to go about doing the implementation -- for which we partner with people on the ground in order to do the implementation, whether they are in kindergartens or at home. The third component is advocacy. So we look to take those two elements, and then advocate for the change with the relevant stakeholders with influence, such as government officials, people that run education systems, and then those who influence parents. So, increasingly, we look to work with people who are very active on social media.
So how do you measure the impact? What has the research shown you and how do you make the case for play-based learning?
We, as a foundation, conduct our own research. And we also work with established research institutions around the world, like BRAC, Cambridge University, MIT in Boston, and Harvard University are our research partners. Over the years, we've assimilated quite a strong base of evidence to support the power of learning through play. And thankfully, a lot of the advances in neurological science then also validated the concepts of how children's brains develop. What we've been able to do is take all of that research and break that down into some key characteristics, which, if present in the child's engagement, can yield those skills that we were talking about: Creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking in social and emotional contexts.
Could you also tell me a little bit about where The LEGO foundation operates around the world and about few of the projects and programs that you have in place? I think that would help contextualize everything that you do for us.
We have operations in many countries around the world. And we have really focused on this for a number of years in four specific countries to really understand how to drive that systemic change. Those four countries include Denmark, as you would expect -- because that's where we're from, and then also in South Africa, Ukraine and Mexico. Those four countries show us the application of learning through play in very different contextual settings.
Could you elaborate on your work here in Bangladesh? Who do you partner with, and when did you come here? And then what was the specific goal when you came to Bangladesh with what you're trying to achieve here?
We started working in Bangladesh in 2015 with BRAC. At that point in time, one of the initiatives that we were kicking off was how to develop low cost, early childhood interventions that can be play based. Because what we found to be one of the barriers to having quality early childhood was the fact that they can be quite expensive. So we want to identify ways in which we can develop low cost implementations. We worked across three different countries -- Kenya, Colombia, and here in Bangladesh.
In Bangladesh, we partnered with BRAC to develop a model which they call the Play Lab, which is an amazing implementation where they recruit local teenage girls from a community and then they build a relatively small room where the children from that community can come under the leadership of the trained teenage girl, called the Play Leader.
What age group do these Play Labs cater to?
This can be for children from two to five years old. BRAC has developed a very robust curriculum. This involves organized play, where the Play Leader facilitates the children in development or activities, and then also free play, where the child has an opportunity to have their own, what we call, agency. And they learn a huge number of things: How to get on with peers, how to resolve conflicts or issues. It's a wonderful way in which children can develop. So that was our entry into Bangladesh. And actually, that was the inspiration for the work that we've done with the humanitarian issue in Cox's Bazar with the Rohingyas.
Your involvement with Bangladesh predates the influx of the migrants into the Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar area; but once you’re here, you realize that a large proportion of the people who've had to flee from Myanmar are actually young kids. Did you, then, tweak the program in order to address this issue?
BRAC were actually very proactive in that context. So, when the issue first arose, they were very quick on the ground to adapt Play Labs on which we've been working with them in Bangladesh to address the issue of the Rohingyas and do some early implementations. And we were made aware of that.
We felt compelled to help fund an expansion of that program, because so little of humanitarian aid actually goes into education -- only about 3%, typically, of it goes into education, and only a fraction of that goes into early childhood. And yet the first five years of a child's life are so important, because that short period is when most neurological development takes place. So, given that children were caught up in that crisis, what we wanted to ensure is that they had an opportunity to first work out the stress and trauma from their situation, and then get back on to a normal developmental trajectory through the power play.
I was absolutely blown away by what we found. The children clearly were benefitted. From this experience, they displayed an enormous amount of energy, vibrancy, and self-confidence. It was fantastic to see them singing and dancing in front of these strangers that will come into witness what was going on.
And what's been fascinating as well is that we've also partnered with Sesame Workshop. They're an amazing partner and fantastic actors. They are, actually, leading the implementation in the Inca camp, and they've brought their media materials into that setting in a very creative way -- through flash drives where they're able to show projections of the market contents. They see the engagement and just the sheer joy and the activation of the children, as they're watching these, acting it out and dancing away, and taking in the content.
You're present in the refugee camps, but also at the same time, you're with the host communities. And you have a Play Lab set up there, too, I believe?
Yes, it is very important that we address all of the people that are affected by these humanitarian crises. And it's important, in that context, that we also addressed the host community. So, through our consortium, we are setting up 100 Play Labs throughout the host community which will be attached to the school system. We're setting up Play Labs in the primary school, and had the opportunity to visit one of those as well, when we were out in the Cox’s Bazar region. Again, it was fantastic to see the vibrancy of the children.
You’ve now been in Bangladesh since 2015, and by now you probably have had a couple of cohorts of kids who've gone through the program, and some have probably now started in either government or BRAC, or even other private, non-formal schools. How have you found that they have made the transition?
BRAC is working on the research of the cohorts that come through the premier of these Play Labs, and that's going to be published later this year. At the same time, we are working with BRAC on the primary school years. We just kicked off a program where we are working in 300 schools to also look at the pedagogical approaches as to how to inject more child-centric, play-based learning throughout those years. And so we can then get a really robust set of research to look at what happens when children are introduced to learning through through the play labs at age four, and then in pre-primary year and then all the way through primary school. So we'll have a full continuum with robust research data, which we are hoping that we'll be able to use with the government. They look to do some of their very progressive reform activities in the whole primary education sector.
Interestingly, the two most active neurological development phases in a human's life is in the first five years, but then in the teenage years as well.
Talk to me a little bit about how working our humanitarian work is key to the mission of The LEGO Foundation. Are there other areas of humanitarian crisis where the foundation is involved around the world?
We're relatively new in the humanitarian space, and one of the big drivers for us to move there is work that was done by one of our research partners, Harvard University, Center for Developing Child, where they have done some really breakthrough work in this concept of toxic stress. It's what occurs in very young children when they're subjected to trauma. The normal neurological development that takes place shuts down as a consequence of that trauma. And Harvard has been working to identify ways in which that can be reverted. Yes, a child can get back on track with the normal development trajectory. And when children face the humanitarian setting, then clearly within that context, there's a lot of trauma around them and around their family, which can cause that toxic stress. So as we were made aware of that research, we felt compelled and convicted to figure out how we can get learning through play into the humanitarian context.
Back in September, we made a donation to an organization called Education Cannot Wait, which is a multilateral funding institution really focused on education in humanitarian crisis settings. Partnering with them can help to try and take the insights that we have on early childhood and get that into all future humanitarian crisis settings.
We've been talking a lot about education and advocacy. In the context of educators and perhaps also of government policymakers, how do you find parents’ receptivity towards the ideas you're addressing? And is that a challenge? Or is that something which you're also focusing on advocating with parents and bringing them along as well?
Well, first thing I should say is, speaking from personal experience, parenting is really hard. So we will always try and respect that in all that we do. And I think that front and center, and in almost the vast majority of cases, parents are really focused on the well being and the best outcomes for their children. So we are operating from that paradigm shift. What we try to do is engage parents with the latest insights and the latest research with regards to what's best to stimulate and develop children at different ages and stages, and equipping the parents with both the knowledge and then, in many cases, the tools that they need in order to do that engagement. One of the things that we've heard in many instances is that parents sometimes can't afford to purchase toys for their children because there's this default that learning through play can only be facilitated through toys. And what we try to provide is information and knowledge that that's not really the case. If you don't have toys, you can still come up with lots of engagement methods that the parents can do which are very playful and don’t involve the toys at all. Or you can use simple things like a box or an empty bottle with some beans which can provide hours of entertainment.
How important is it for the parents themselves to be involved in the process?
Research has shown that the early caregiver interaction with young children is a critical component of that child's subsequent neurological development and their ultimate success rate, particularly the early engagement when the child is very young. Interestingly, when the child is very young, you often feel that they can't do very much. However, that's the stage where the brain is really hyperactive, and that's where the parental engagement is so critical, in order to teach the child social and emotional engagement, particularly.
What we don't want this to be is a nebulous concept, but really translated through into ways in which it can be readily implemented in any environment that involves children, whether that is at home, in the classroom or even in the community.