VVOB on board LEGO Foundation’s global partnership for Learning through Play

	Club of Vietnamese who used to live, study in Brazil debuts
	Study uncovers protein that keeps skin youthful
	16 insiders' tips on studying in Sweden

The project will develop pedagogical materials for teachers to learn how to embed playful learning activities in their teaching of the new curriculum. Photo: VVOB

Playful partnership

Play-based pedagogies are proven to help children gain a breadth of skills, thus fostering critical thinking, collaboration, and problem-solving competencies that are crucial in today’s fast-changing world. For teachers to effectively integrate Learning through Play (LtP) in their classrooms, the LEGO Foundation’s global partnership will work with partners and government systems to provide effective, ongoing teacher professional development to integrate the use of play-based learning in teaching.

“By focusing on teachers, these partnerships bring LtP approaches directly into children’s classrooms. Working with stakeholders across the system, these partnerships can help to create an enabling environment that supports and sustains the use of play-based pedagogies in achieving improved learning for millions of primary school learners,” said Sarah Bouchie, Head of Global Programmes at the LEGO Foundation.

The LEGO Foundation is teaming up with organisations across Africa and Asia to support primary school teachers’ use of LtP. The organisations will work with their respective Ministry of Education teacher professional development systems to promote LtP pedagogies in alignment with ongoing curriculum reforms. For Vietnam, VVOB has keenly accepted to take on the challenge with iPLAY.

iPLAY: Introducing Learning trough Play at scale in Vietnam

Vietnam is changing rapidly. To reach their future potential, primary learners need a breadth of skills, including cognitive, social, emotional, physical and creative skills. To transform the knowledge-focused education system into an education system that equips learners with 21st century skills, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) is rolling out a new, competency-based curriculum.

VVOB’s iPLAY project (‘Integrating Play-based Learning Activities among Young learners’) supports MOET to achieve the objectives of the new curriculum by integrating LtP pedagogies into its in-service primary teacher professional development (TPD) system.

The project will develop pedagogical materials for teachers to learn how to embed playful learning activities in their teaching of the new curriculum, and for school leaders and district education officials to create an enabling environment for LtP. In combination with 5 large-scale in-service trainings and school-based TPD, it will develop teachers’ attitudes, knowledge and skills to incorporate LtP-pedagogies in the classroom.

Applying a 3-step scaling strategy in Vietnam, iPLAY will reach 14,695 schools and more than 150,000 primary teachers in the country by 2023. The project also estimates that it will reach 3 million parents by 2024.