Not One Way to Learn
Imaginaria Club
March 2026
6 min read
When we observe a child holding an object, we instinctively try to define what is happening.
Questions arise that seek to classify the situation into familiar categories — Is the child playing? Are they deeply engaged, or simply enjoying the moment?
However, the child’s experience is not organised in that way.
Questions always open possibilities; what matters is how they are framed.
Learning Through Experience
When we ask what a child is doing, we often turn to categories that separate the experience.
Within this way of organising it, learning is positioned as something distinct: having fun is simply having fun, playing is simply playing.
In some cases, aspects of play are incorporated through teaching strategies, yet often under the assumption that play serves learning, rather than being a form of learning in itself.
These ways of understanding experience are widely embedded and shape how we observe and support children.
However, perspectives from early childhood education and studies on multimodality suggest that learning does not occur as an isolated moment, but as part of an ongoing experience (Unsworth, 2022; Callow, 2008).
In this sense, for the child, learning takes place within the action itself, as they manipulate, observe and explore.
Creating as a Way of Thinking
From these perspectives, creation also emerges as part of the process of understanding.
Within the field of arts education, authors such as Eisner have suggested that creating involves making decisions, exploring alternatives and constructing meaning through action.
More recently, research on arts-based programmes in school contexts has shown that sustained engagement in creative activities is associated with the development of flexible thinking and complex cognitive capacities (Egana-delSol, 2023).
In this way, within the child’s artistic experience, creating involves imagining, trying, adjusting and trying again.
Play as a Form of Knowledge and Multimodal Practice
Within this framework, play takes on a particular place in the organisation of schooling.
It is often presented as a distinct moment within the day.
However, from the field of play pedagogy, various authors suggest that play is not a pause or a secondary resource, but a form of activity with structure, meaning and the potential for knowledge (Sarlé, 2010).
Play, then, involves action, exploration and decision-making, while also sustaining forms of understanding that develop within the activity itself.
In education, this kind of integrated experience is described as multimodal learning.
This means that children do not construct meaning through a single mode, such as language, but through a combination of different forms of engagement: movement, manipulation of objects, observation, image, sound and interaction with others.
When a child plays, explores or creates, they are not using a single pathway to learn, but several at once.
In practice, this means that learning is not limited to listening or repeating, but involves acting, trying, representing and participating actively.
These forms work together and support the process of understanding.
The Importance of Aesthetic Education
From studies in visual culture and visual literacy, it has been suggested that the way materials and environments are presented influences how children attend, interpret and construct meaning (Callow, 2008).
Colours, shapes, textures and the arrangement of objects guide action and exploration.
Aesthetic experience becomes part of the learning process and contributes to its development.
In continuity with this, the environment is understood as an active part of the learning process.
From approaches such as Montessori, as well as contemporary perspectives on learning design, it is recognised that space, materials and their organisation influence the actions children take.
In this way, the arrangement of objects, their accessibility and spatial relationships guide exploration and interaction, meaning that the environment plays an important role in the construction of knowledge.
For this reason, when a child manipulates an object, imagines, tests and makes decisions, everything happens at once.
They are not moving from one activity to another, but engaging in a single experience.
In that moment, they are playing, creating and learning at the same time.
These are different ways of naming what, for the child, is a single action.
Where Imaginaria Begins
This way of understanding learning gives rise to Imaginaria.
In many educational settings, these dimensions are presented separately, organised into different activities with specific objectives.
However, in children’s experience, these processes occur simultaneously.
Imaginaria is conceived as a space where experiences are designed to respect this way of learning: exploring, creating and understanding within a single action.
This Journal is intended as a place to continue developing and reflecting on these ideas.
Sources
Callow, J. (2008). Show Me: Principles for Assessing Students’ Visual Literacy.
Egana-delSol, P. (2023). The impact of arts education on cognitive development.
Sarlé, P. (2010). El juego en la educación inicial.
Unsworth, L. (2022). Multimodal Literacy in School Science.