Learning Through Play: Increasing Impact, Reducing Inequality

This study explores the role of play in contributing to the effort to promote learning and reduce inequality. Reviews of play’s importance for learning present mostly correlational evidence from small samples in high-income, developed contexts, most often the United States, and often under laboratory conditions. This review expands both the geographic breadth and the scale of this evidence and explores the use of play in early childhood classroom and home-based educational interventions that have demonstrated causal impact on learning and the closing of achievement gaps. By doing so, it aims to understand whether and how the evidence about play and learning relates to tackling the learning crisis, especially in terms of inequality in learning outcomes around the globe.