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Our research

In the Rumpus research group, we explore fun.

What is fun, and why is it important? When does fun matter? Is fun the essence of play? Can we have fun without play? How do fun, play and learning relate to one another?

Some of our research involves finding out what fun means to different people around the world. In Nepal, children have told us that mountains are fun. In the UK, mountains themselves may not be fun, but rock climbing might be. 

A key area of research is fun in learning and education. We have explored fun from perspectives of learners and teachers in Indonesia, Brazil, Europe, the UK, Lebanon, the Philippines and elsewhere.

  • Is learning easier, or more enduring, when you are having fun? 
  • Is ‘making learning fun’ an empty promise? 
  • Is it a distraction? 
  • Or is it something that can have a real and lasting impact?

We work at The Open University and globally to understand fun – and to have fun while doing so.

As a transdisciplinary group, we are employing a range of methods to explore the meanings and applications of fun. These encompass visual and text-based methods, including use of photos, drawings, survey, interview and data mining. We are also working interculturally to understand differences in language and interpretations of ‘fun’ and related concepts.

‘Fun’ is a contested term. It is frequently invoked in many cultures in rhetorics of childhoods, by both adults and children, typically as a necessary constituent of a ‘good childhood’ and as a defining characteristic of children and young people’s identities and experience. Yet a rigorous examination of this construct and its relationship to childhoods and children’s identities and learning has not, to our knowledge, been defined or discussed in the many literatures spanning children and childhoods. Indeed, while invoking fun as necessary to good childhoods, adults also often have ambivalent or even dismissive perspectives on the concept, viewing fun as frivolous, ‘just fun’, or considering it wasteful, setting it in opposition to the meaningful ‘work’ of learning and development in childhood. Fun in adulthood is also a challenged and under-examined construct.

We examine the role of fun in learning and life, for both children and adults, and from both children’s and adults’ perspectives. We draw on expertise in children’s identities and self-concept including their invocations of fun as central to their selves, in teacher and learner identities across different spaces, including their epistemologies of fun, and in inter- and cross-cultural working including community-based sustainable development.

We explore practical and theoretical aspects of fun. Here are some of our current projects.

 

We are developing a theorized perspective on the nature of fun

To find out about what fun in learning means, we are carrying out empirical research, systematic reviews, and textual analysis.

Dr Ale Okada has developed a model of fun . Currently, she is leading the development of a framework about “emancipatory fun” in education and analysing the open and inclusive “fun learning practices and methods” that emerge from the Rumpus project OLAF - Online Learning and Fun and CONNECT – Open Schooling with engaging and future oriented science supported by the RRI methodological approach.

Fun, happiness and learning in Indonesia

We are looking at the notion of happiness in learning in Indonesia, and how this might differ between cultures and epistemologies. The next step is to focus on how teachers in Indonesia think about the notion of fun.

What do children and young people think is fun in Nepal?

We are researching children and young people’s conceptualizations of fun in in Nepal. We have been speaking with them and they are taking photos about fun. This research is underway.

Fun in children’s favourite activities and relationships in Dublin

We are analysing children’s descriptions of their favourite activities and people in Dublin, as so many of them drew and talked about fun.

Definitions of fun

We are carrying out an inductive process to identify definitions of fun, its contexts and meanings.

 

To embody the spirit of experiencing fun as well as researching it, we often meet off-campus. Meetings frequently take place at the home of one of our members, whose guinea pigs provide background entertainment. Here, we introduce you to them.

Further projects

Contact us

Whatever your reasons for wanting to connect with us, you can contact us via email or social media on the addresses below

Email: ale.okada@open.ac.uk