Playful Learning 2026 Programme

Seeing the Wood for the Trees? A card deck to support emerging researchers

Lead Author: Marguerite van der Merwe

Additional authors: Fatima Cassim

Timetable: Wednesday Session 3: 16:00-16:45, Terrace Room

Description:

Students entering postgraduate research at Honours and early Masters level frequently experience research methodology as fragmented, opaque, and overwhelming. Many struggle to understand how research questions, methodological design, data-gathering methods, and claims of contribution relate to one another, often encountering methodology as a collection of disconnected techniques rather than as an integrated, decision-making process (Kiley & Mullins, 2005; Wisker, 2012). These challenges are particularly pronounced in Global South contexts, including South Africa, where uneven exposure to research cultures, linguistic diversity, and structural inequalities further complicate students’ transitions into independent research (Cekiso & Madikiza, 2014; McKenna, 2017).

This interactive session introduces Seeing the Wood for the Trees?, a purpose-designed card game developed specifically to address these challenges at Honours and early Masters level. The game emerged from sustained experimentation with play-based learning approaches in South African postgraduate classrooms, where playful, design-led interventions were used to support methodological understanding, conceptual coherence, and research confidence. Insights from this classroom-based experimentation directly informed the deliberate design of the card game as a structured pedagogical intervention for research education, rather than a general or incidental playful activity (Whitton, 2018; James & Nerantzi, 2019).

The game reframes research methodology as a navigable journey through a forest, inviting learners to “see the wood for the trees” by attending to relationships between methodological components rather than isolated decisions. The tactile cards create an embodied experience, which in turn facilitates a safe, risk-taking space for methodological exploration. Participants construct a research pathway using cards that represent four core elements of research: a research question type, a methodological design path, a data-gathering approach, and a plausible research insight or contribution. African woodland character guides, representing each stage of the research process, serve as metaphorical scaffolds that support reasoning about alignment, feasibility, and methodological limits while making research jargon more accessible. The metaphorical, character-driven approach of the game intentionally disrupts traditional text-heavy methods of teaching research methodology, aiming to make learning more accessible and deepen engagement.

During the Playful Learning Conference session, participants will play the game in small groups, articulate and explain their methodological pathways, and translate these into their own disciplinary contexts (e.g. education, health sciences, engineering, social work, design). The session draws explicitly on playful learning principles to support conceptual reasoning: (1) A short writing template supports this translation, linking play explicitly to research writing practice; (2)The session concludes with a collective reflection on how metaphor, narrative, and structured constraint can support methodological thinking and reduce research-related anxiety.

By sharing a field-tested, South African-developed pedagogical tool, the session contributes a Global South perspective to scholarly conversations on playful learning in higher education. Rather than positioning play as an add-on, this case study demonstrates how playful learning can be intentionally designed to support research literacy, epistemic confidence, and may transform how emerging researchers inhabit, navigate and understand methodological coherence.

References, web links and other resources:

Cekiso, M., & Madikiza, N. (2014). Reading strategies used by postgraduate students at a university in South Africa. Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology, 5(2), 189–196.
James, A., & Nerantzi, C. (2019). The power of play in higher education: Creativity in tertiary learning. Palgrave Macmillan.
Kiley, M., & Mullins, G. (2005). Supervisors’ conceptions of research and the implications for supervisor development. International Journal for Academic Development, 10(2), 85–97.
McKenna, S. (2017). Crossing conceptual thresholds in doctoral communities. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 54(5), 458–466.
Whitton, N. (2018). Playful learning: Tools, techniques, and tactics. Research in Learning Technology, 26.
Wisker, G. (2012). The postgraduate research handbook (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.