[Xmca-l] Sad news about Pentti Hakkarainen

[Beth Ferholt]

We are so sad to announce that Pentti Hakkarainen passed away last week.


Pentti was a patient, kind, delightful and brilliant mentor to many of us,
especially those of us who study play.  He and his wife, Milda, hosted many
of us, Beth when she was just starting graduate school, at his laboratory,
Silmu: a magical laboratory (house) in Kajaani where phenomenal adult-child
play took place.  This is work that inspired adult-child play and play
studies literally all over the world, from senior centers in Japan to early
childhood programs in Australia to military bases in CA, and many more.


Not only was Pentti developing new theoretical insights – he developed
insightful practice too. He established pedagogical innovations in Finland
like the transitory model for starting school in which children of 4 to 8
year were together with multi-professional teacher teams.  Anna worked as
an ethnographer in one of these classrooms as a doctoral student and can
say it was truly a unique way of organizing early learning.



Pentti inspired a great deal of Finnish teachers to play with children and
to find a player within them.  The teachers he worked with read Vygotsky
with him and we think that in many ways he helped to change the way they
saw their work.  His thoughts on the connection between play and learning,
and on motivation and play, and sense and meaning, also inspired our work
as young graduate students and helped to open up whole new worlds of play
that we have will develop further in our work.


We are so grateful to Pentti, and sad for us all, in the face of this loss.


Beth and Anna (Rainio)

-- 
Beth Ferholt (pronouns: she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
Department of Early Childhood and Art Education
Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Affiliated Faculty, Program in Urban Education, CUNY Graduate Center
Affiliated Faculty, School of Education and Communication, Jönköping
University

Email: bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu
CC bferholt@gmail.com if writing to CUNY address.
Phone: (718) 951-5205
Office: 2306 James Hall
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210-2889
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