Gallo Publishes to Essays in Education
Dr. Dawnita Gallo, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education, in the School of Teaching and Learning, recently published “Play and flow: Is there a connection” to Essays in Education. This manuscript draws a theoretical connection between flow and play. Flow occurs, according to Csikszentihalyi, when a person becomes deeply engaged and immersed in an activity, which leads to a time of great productivity, as well as satisfaction. Flow is said to be reached when a person having clear goals and receiving feedback, a period of intense concentration, a deep sense of self-control, results in a loss of self-consciousness leading to transformation of time.
This manuscript argues that a child’s, characterized by intrinsic motivation, spontaneity, deep engagement and concentration, leading to the child having fun, shares significant parallels with flow. The theoretical connection being that the overlap between achieving a state of flow while playing, may well lead to enhanced learning and development.
Essays in Education is a digital repository of Southeast Minnesota and maintained at Winona State University.