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Cooperative Games Use the Power of Play to Teach

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A board game with owls and trees on it.
Teaching with Cooperative Games Instills Prosocial Skills

Play is a child’s workshop; it is through play that children learn how to be in the world. Much current scholarship documents the close link between play and learning. For children across cultures, learning is achieved through play.1 Hunter-gatherer children play field games that prepare them to hunt. North American children, on the other hand, play with toy cars, plastic tools, fake money, miniature kitchens and doll houses in preparation for their adult roles. Further, play isn’t unique to humans. Mammals in general learn the skills they will use as adults by playing when they are young. Little foxes playfully pounce to practice predation. Fawns run and kick their long legs to rehearse the survival skill of fleeing. Young ones everywhere need to play in order to learn the skills they will use in adulthood.

A teacher’s gratifying and important role is to nourish the inevitable learning process of youth, to channel it in ways that lead to healthy and happy lives. Since play is a chief mode by which children learn, it’s important for us educators to keep an eye on what kinds of play opportunities we offer kids in school. With a bit of consciousness and care, teachers can set children up to learn beneficial skills through play at recess and during academic class time too. We are remiss if we ignore the opportunity to foster positive skills through play, for the play yard and classroom can become breeding grounds for harmful habits and negative social behaviors when meanness and aggression are allowed to take hold.  

Play is normal, natural, and free. One of the basic attributes of play is that the outcome doesn’t matter. In the realm of play we escape the pressures of real life. We can take risks, experiment, goof around, relax, and try something new. On the other hand, games have structure and rules. For this reason, games are more tightly tied to the social context than other forms of play such as imaginative play. When a child plays a game, it’s inevitable that he will follow—and learn—a set of social rules, a code of conduct. The wise caregiver recognizes that children are learning the rules of social engagement during games no matter what. So we may as well pay attention to this and be sure the learning is what we want to impart. We don’t want to unconsciously foster games that reflect and reinforce negative cultural patterns. We do want to expose children to games that will allow them to learn how to be happy, healthy, and good to one another. Cooperative games do just this. 

A Brief History of Cooperative Games

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The cooperative games movement dates back to the 1960’s and 70’s. Early pioneers include:

Terry Orlick (Canadian professor of kinesiology; cooperative games inventor and researcher; Olympic coach; and personal performance expert)

Jim Deacove (owner of Family Pastimes games company and pioneering designer of cooperative board games)

Stewart Brand (author of The Whole Earth Catalog and Vietnam war veteran who invented “New Games”—games that emphasized playfulness and joy rather than winning)

Dale LeFevre (game inventor and author of several New Games books)

Pat Farrington (who was connected to the New Games movement but added the insight that trust and cooperation could be built into games so that her games were “not so much a way to compare our abilities but to celebrate them”)

Ken Kolsbun (previous owner of Animal Town, the first manufacturer of cooperative games in the United States and designer of the classic board game Save the Whales. )

CooperativeGames.com got its start in 2009 when Ken Kolsbun retired and Suzanne Lyons turned AnimalTown, aka Child and Nature, into the Internet’s first shop and resource center focused strictly on cooperative play.

Since the early 1970’s, and thanks to the effort and inspiration of the earliest innovators, cooperative games of all sorts (circle games, board games, PE games, ice breakers, educational games, etc.) have spread organically to homes, schools, camps, work places, churches, activist gatherings and other settings around the world syncing up in Europe with a long-standing tradition of “friend games.” Still, cooperative games have remained relatively unadvertised and have not been promoted or produced on a mass scale. This is a mixed blessing, but is perhaps a positive for the integrity of the field. They are a bottom-up rather than a top-down “reform”, evolving as more and more people creatively adapt the idea to their own uses.

As the need for greater cooperation at a societal level becomes clear, public awareness of cooperative gaming grows. The educational community is awakening to them since cooperative games are at the intersection of four major pedagogical trends:

• recognition of the value of play

• cooperative learning

• attention to school climate

• gamification of education for content learning

In addition, cooperative digital gaming is lately attracting the interest of academics and entrepreneurs who recognize that large-scale online cooperative gaming has applicability to sustainability and social justice issues. All factors are converging, and surely cooperative play is blossoming in exciting new ways.

For more on cooperative games, to purchase games, and find free ones, visit CooperativeGames.com.

Happy Playing!

Rethinking Youth Sports with Cooperative Games

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A board game with owls and trees on it.I enjoy reading the literature on cooperative games as do many people who come to my web shop CooperativeGames.com. I just read and now recommend  “Rethinking Youth Sports†by Ramsey and Rank, of the Georgia Parks and Recreation Department. PE teachers and camp counselors: this article on cooperative games is especially relevant to you!

The authors argue that youth sports promote aggression in kids. The reason, they say, is that kids learn a winner-take-all attitude by participating in sports and that fair play and sportsmanship are on the decline. They attribute this to general cultural influences as well as violent behavior among some high profile professional athletes in recent years. Sad if this is true, but in any case, Ramsey and Rank feel that cooperative games can do much to restore civil behavior and reduce aggression in kids’ sports. They provide the following examples of how individuals and organizations might enhance youth activities with cooperative games:

  1. Incorporate cooperative games as a key component of youth activities programs
  2. Work with local schools to provide support for physical education teachers, teachers, and playground leaders with cooperative games activities and strategies for implementation of cooperative games in the classroom. Do the same with daycare facilities.
  3. Establish a consortium or recreation provider agencies and focus on the positive aspects of youth sports, incorporating cooperative games as part of the process.
  4. Embody cooperative games into the “Benefits of Recreation” information provided by the National Recreation and Park Association, state park and recreation associations, and local park and recreation agencies.
  5. Sponsor a local workshop on “how-to” conduct cooperative games.
  6. Work with local youth sports organizations and share the values and benefits or cooperative games. Suggest strategies for implementing them as part of their regular youth sports programs.

Be sure to check the Fun and Free pages at CooperativeGames.com for free directions to cooperative games useful for PE classes. Also shop for books on cooperative games in our book section. Or, make up your own games! It’s easier than you may think.

Research Findings: Being on the Same Team, as We are in Cooperative Games, Promotes Helpfulness and Reduces Aggression

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A board game with owls and trees on it.In an experiment profiled in a recent British study1, students helped out a person who pretended to be hurt much more if they thought they were on the same soccer team as him. So it’s not just a person’s level of altruism, their beliefs about others, etc. Really we help one another out largely because we construe ourselves to be on the same “teamâ€. The sense of being on the same team promotes helpfulness. Likewise, according to the book I am now reading The Psychology of Group Aggression2, construing another person as belonging to a different team promotes aggression! Plainly stated, when we think we are on the same side we tend to be nice—but put us on opposite sides, and the meanness comes out. Teachers, we can put this scholarship to good use: bring on the cooperative games! Kids of any age forget about group identification and who’s in and who’s out. For a time, they feel that they are on the same team. This promotes helpfulness and mitigating aggression.

Sources:

1. See: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin at this address

http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe571576736502757013&m=fefc1273716707&ls=fdea1c7877670c7577127172&l=febe1677716d0278&s=fe171c787c62017d7d1375&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe2c15787162047c731776

2. See:  The Psychology of Group Aggression by Arnold P. Goldstein; John Wiley & Sons; © 2002

Cooperative Games and Kindness to Strangers

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I love the research coming out that backs the use of cooperative games. There’s a study out now that looks at how the sense of belonging to a group makes people more likely to help others in real life. The study is described in an article in the Stanford School of Social Innovation newsletter and I think it’s very interesting. The gist of it is that people help those in need more readily if they construe them to be in the same group. Teachers, here is another study showing why cooperative games are a great idea in the schools. Cooperative games help kids feel that they are on the same team, and with that mindset, they are more likely to help one another out.

Here’s an excerpt of the study, which was done in 2005 and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in Britain.

A group of people are standing in the grass.

Two studies conducted at Lancaster University in the UK played on the intense rivalry between fans of two English football teams, Manchester United and Liverpool. In the first study, Manchester United fans were recruited to fill out questionnaires about their interest in the team and the degree to which they identified as fans. They were then invited to walk across campus to see a video about football teams. Along the way, an accident was staged in which a runner slipped and fell, groaning in pain. Hidden observers watched the incident, and those taking part in the study were asked about it when they reached the projection room.

Participants, all of whom had a strong identification as Manchester fans, were more likely to ask the runner if he needed help when he was wearing a Manchester United shirt than when he was wearing a Liverpool shirt or an ordinary unbranded shirt.

In the second study, Manchester United fans were again recruited, but when they arrived they were told that they were participating in a study about football fans in general (not Manchester United fans, specifically). They were also told that the study aimed to focus on the positive aspects of fanhood as opposed to the negative incidents and stories that usually get attention. The study questionnaires asked them about their broader interest in the game and what they shared with other fans. They then were instructed to cross campus to head to the projection room, and along the way witnessed the same staged incident and conditions described in the first study.

In this case, participants were as likely to help a victim in a Manchester United shirt as they were to help someone in a Liverpool shirt. And they were more likely to help those wearing team shirts than those who were not.

The results of the second study are fascinating in terms of their implications. The results indicate that when people are encouraged to see social category boundaries at a more inclusive level –– all football fans, versus fans of one team –– they will extend help to more individuals. Even in a country in which bitter intergroup rivalry exists between fans of one football team and another, when people expand their notion of the “in-group†they are more likely to reach out to those in the “other camp.â€

One noteworthy strength of this research is that it offers an analysis of actual helping behavior rather than “beliefs about†or “intentions†to act. Evidence of dramatic shifts in such behavior across deeply entrenched antagonisms in response to simple changes in levels of categorization is striking.

Indeed, the studies bring up questions regarding how we may cue more prosocial behavior not only in emergency situations, but in all circumstances. How may we promote a greater feeling of inclusiveness among members of society at wider levels such that boundaries become meaningless, and empathetic concern leads to more consistent positive action? Clearly this research offers inspiration for new approaches to camaraderie building across groups, communities, states, and even nations.

You can view the whole article from the Stanford Newsletter here:
http://view.exacttarget.com/?j=fe571576736502757013&m=fefc1273716707&ls=fdea1c7877670c7577127172&l=febe1677716d0278&s=fe171c787c62017d7d1375&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe2c15787162047c731776