Incorporating the Pedagogy of Play Through Gyotaku in an Undergraduate Oceanography Course

Incorporating aspects of play into students’ learning experiences may enhance motivation, creativity, collaboration, and a suite of other positive outcomes. Unlike many K-12 educators, those in higher education teaching roles have not yet fully embraced play as a strategy for learning due to a lack of pedagogical expertise, concerns that it will be judged as juvenile, or fear of relinquishing instructor-centered teaching methods. In this article, we outline our successful deployment of an activity embodying the elements of play in an undergraduate course in oceanography. The activity consisted of students performing gyotaku, a Japanese process of fish printing. Gyotaku provided a platform for creativity and collaboration while strengthening their understanding of marine organisms’ anatomical features and the historical and cultural aspects of gyotaku. Though the hope is for readers to use this example, we challenge other educators, especially those in higher education, to embrace play, however they define it, as a learning tool for marine science education.