Play Tarot Cards

Play Tarot Cards is a playful reflection method that uses illustrated cards to explore the qualities of play in learning and teaching. Through structured dialogue, the cards help participants reflect on past experiences, recognise play qualities and identify new possibilities for future practice.

Begin by assigning three roles:

• an interviewer
• a participant
• a reflection team

The participant chooses one specific playful learning or play situation to explore. The interviewer asks questions that help the participant describe the situation in detail before the cards are introduced. The activity then continues in four rounds.

1. In the first round, three cards are turned over one at a time to explore which play qualities were present in the original situation.
2. In the second round, three new cards support reflection on how the situation is understood today.
3. In the third round, three cards are used to explore how the situation could be further developed by introducing new play qualities.
4. Finally, the reflection team shares its observations and discusses the most significant insights from the conversation.

The method supports reflection on the qualities of play by connecting concrete experiences with different play qualities. Rather than providing fixed answers, the cards invite dialogue, multiple interpretations and new perspectives that can inform the development of future learning activities and playful practice.

The method has been developed and tested as part of the Playful Learning Research programme and has been used in teacher and pedagogy education. Participants use the cards to reflect on specific teaching or play situations, identify the play qualities that were present and explore how these can be strengthened in future practice. Experiences from workshops showed that the conversations helped participants discover new aspects of their own practice, develop a shared language for play qualities and recognise different ways of creating playful learning environments.