Play and joy
Effective learning is based on free and joyful experience. Play, in the Winnicottian sense, represents creative autonomy rather than mere gamification. Combined with joy, this freedom of experimentation forms the foundation of successful pedagogy.
Experience
Whatever we do, we live an experience. If someone speaks to me or explains things to me, it is an experience that I simply live. Similarly, if I engage in activities, create things, perform calculations, conduct research, or work in a group, these are other lived experiences.
It is through experience that we acquire knowledge, that we build for ourselves. The notion of play can often be misunderstood, confused with gamification—a very naive fantasy that better learning happens when we feel like we’re playing rather than working.
This idea is naive because, on the contrary, children like to work: work gives meaning to life and activity. I would therefore like to clarify what I mean by “play,” which has nothing to do with this notion of gamification.
Joy
In an educational setting, care must be taken to ensure that these experiences are beneficial, that they contribute to the learning of knowledge or skills. To learn better, it is essential that our senses are awakened and that we are happy about the experience we are having. Otherwise, the information and experiences we encounter will be associated with negative emotions, which is obviously not conducive to learning—with the possible exception of learning through trauma, though this is generally not desirable.
Thus, play, which embodies the desire to experiment, along with joy—that supreme positive emotion that fosters confidence—relies on receptivity and openness. These two notions form the basis of effective pedagogy.
Play, Freedom, and Work
I am referring to the concepts of psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. For him, playing is distinct from the game (the organized activity). Playing is an autonomous, spontaneous, and free activity of transforming the world through manipulation or construction—for example, games like Lego. It is a way for the child to build what Winnicott calls the true self (the authentic self), as opposed to the false self (the self adapted to social demands).
The play I am referring to is autonomy, choice. It is also work, but free work, not commanded labor. According to Winnicott, this playing is always a moment of creativity: not obedience to instructions, but the invention of solutions by oneself, an elaboration—whether graphic, architectural, or even kinetic, as when playing marbles, for example.
For Winnicott, this play takes place in a potential space (also called a transitional area), a space where the child knows they are not worried or judged, and where they therefore have full freedom to invent—and to invent themselves, by daring to play.
Here you will find educational tools, practical and conceptual. These tools are based on the experiences and thinking that I have been developing in a large number of contexts since the 1990s. I have developed a singular, operative pedagogical practice, inspired by Célestin Freinet’s methods among others, adapted to contemporary human issues and to the tools of the 21st Century.
Pedagogy is an experimental practice, which has its theories, its history and its thinkers. It is a central construction tool in the educational field but also beyond, in the framework of professional interactions or cultural mediation for example. Thus the usefulness of the methods and reflections you will find here goes beyond the context of teaching.
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Pedagogical Innovation
From method to posture, reinventing the act of teaching.
Pedagogical innovation is not limited to a catalog of new techniques. It resides, in my view, in the ability to invent, here and now, a learning (…) -
For an ecology of dispensability
Rethinking authority and transmission.
Faced with the vertical management that dominates and alienates, another path exists: that of an authority that aims for its own dispensability, (…) -
The specter of the other
From anxious dehumanization to confident recognition.
How can the other, a subject of rights, become a threatening figure? A reflection born from a confrontation with reality, beyond the fantasies and (…) -
The State of Openness
For democratic and transformative facilitation.
How can we cultivate a welcoming posture that allows everyone to contribute fully? Openness is not a method but an inner state that transforms our (…) -
Respecting Instructions
When creative transgression becomes a source of learning.
The voluntary or involuntary transgression of instructions, often creative, if not considered as an error, becomes a source of enrichment and (…) -
Education in the age of artificial intelligence
Rethinking our practices for a changing world.
AI disrupts our relationship to knowledge, thus questioning the foundations of education. This transformation goes beyond the technical to touch (…) -
Formalizing the informal
Informality, essential to learning, resists structure while calling for it. How to tame it.
The absence of informal aspects in distance learning forces us to rethink its fundamental nature. This constraint becomes a laboratory for (…) -
Secret violence
The roots of authoritarianism: what elementary school really teaches.
In France, the transition to middle school exposes young people to a secret violence, reproducing school authoritarianism in their autonomous (…) -
Is pedagogy revolutionary?
For an education policy.
Education is torn between two visions: preparing for a competitive world or fostering democracy in schools. In my view, true effectiveness lies in (…) -
Truth and lies
Ethics of the pedagogical relationship.
Authentic pedagogy is grounded in truth within the teacher-student relationship. Beyond content, it is the value of words and honesty that enable (…) -
Mind mapping to create groups
Autonomy and empowerment for small groups.
Mind mapping facilitates team formation by making choices visible, empowering participants, and creating a more autonomous group dynamic compared (…) -
Emotional synchronization
A technique for empathizing with the audience.
How can we improve public speaking in front of a group? This can be a very challenging exercise, especially when facing people who aren’t (…) -
Play and joy
Learning is based on free and joyful experience.
Effective learning is based on free and joyful experience. Play, in the Winnicottian sense, represents creative autonomy rather than mere (…) -
Violence and the law
Revealing an ordinary cognitive dissonance.
I question the use of violence to enforce the law and propose an alternative vision where the law would serve to emancipate rather than subjugate, (…) -
Listening to the Other
The frame’s foundation.
For effective pedagogy, listening to students by the teacher is essential. Contrary to expectations, it is first and foremost the teacher who must (…) -
Action or information?
A dialectic of pedagogy.
Educational approaches can take two paths: information (transmission of knowledge) and action (lived experiences). These two complementary (…) -
Philosophy and pedagogy
For a profound practice of pedagogy.
Philosophy and pedagogy are deeply interconnected, as our worldview influences our educational approach. If we consider that humans are (…) -
The path of the person
Attention to others as a pedagogical principle.
In an educational context, the non-participation of learners does not always indicate disinterest. By focusing on their individual progress rather (…) -
Fear, a learning inhibitor
Elements of neuroscience.
Learning is about creating new neural connections, which requires resisting reflexive thinking, activated in situations of danger or stress. To (…) -
The symbolic third, a tool to connect
Psychoanalytical tool to promote the construction of the link.
The symbolic third is a concept that may seem very abstract, but for me it is very effective in creating a constructive link, especially between (…) -
Podcast: “For a democratic and feminist pedagogy”
Dialogue between Noémie Rubat du Mérac and Benoît Labourdette on June 25, 2022.
Overview of the fundamentals of the pedagogical actions conceived and carried out by Benoît Labourdette, linked to the deconstruction of systems (…) -
It is the educator and not the child who needs pedagogy
Podcast on the subject of pedagogical posture.
Contrary to popular belief, the most effective way to help people learn is not to pass on knowledge and skills, but to put yourself in a position (…) -
The Freinet method applied to digital mediation
Pedagogy and politics of autonomy.
The pedagogical method known as “Freinet” (conceptualized by the pedagogue Célestin Freinet from the 1920s to the 1960s, as a synthesis of (…) -
Work or mastery ?
Methodology of the productive action.
How do we achieve the best possible result in the work, in the construction? In my opinion, contrary to popular belief, it is not the search for (…) -
The Rational Education of Childhood
A film by Benoît Labourdette (on a text by Émilie Lamotte, 3’43s, 2019).
The most effective educational principles are not the ones we believe. Discovery of Emilie Lamotte’s sharp and constructive thinking. Émilie (…) -
Fragile hopscotch in the sky
A film by Benoît Labourdette (3’31s, 2019).
The inner experience of a moment of pedagogical innovation in the classroom. -
What is a “good frame” for pedagogy?
In the field of education, there is a consensus that a “frame” is essential for the effective functioning of the educational strategy, and (…) -
Out of the comfort zone
In collective work, paradoxically, it is when one does not feel reassured that one works best. But how does it work?When we prepare for a job (…) -
Listening and silence
How to get listening and silence in a group? Surprisingly, by going through a work on oneself the results can be spectacular. Silence is a (…) -
Mindmapping
What mindmapping is and how to use it as a professional tool. Quick synthesis. Mindmap, heuristic map or mental map?A mindmap (in english), (…)
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Leaving A film by Benoît Labourdette (5’44s, 2018).
Life is freedom and love. -
Desire Calligrams
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The meeting A film by Benoît Labourdette (5’16s, 2011).
A meeting, like a thousand other meetings. No, it is your meeting. -
Blackie Un film de Benoît Labourdette (1’11s, 2018).
Quand un rouleau de scotch se révolte. -
You can be “successful” or not, that’s not what’s important. Notes on moving image
Because you can have it and lose it, which is very destabilizing. If you know where you are, and you work, consistently, regardless of social (…)
