Playful Higher Education Futures: Hopeful and Utopian Thinking in Pedagogy

This chapter explores the concept of playful Higher Education as a space infused with hopeful and utopian voices that resist prevailing trends of efficiency, performativity, and individualisation. Through a thematic analysis of playful voices, it envisions alternative futures for Higher Education that prioritise communality and relationality. Drawing on insights from a three-year, design-based research project involving playful learning experiments and interventions in interprofessional contexts, the chapter highlights how playful education can act as an imaginative utopia, promoting a hopeful pedagogy. Ultimately, it argues that embracing playfulness in Higher Education is both a hopeful and utopian endeavour, offering a meaningful path toward transforming and improving the educational system.