When I walked past one of our learning spaces recently, I stopped.

There was mess and cardboard everywhere.

Pieces scattered across the floor. Scraps piled on tables. Tape hanging off half-finished creations. Small offcuts mixed with leaves, sticks and paper. It looked messy. Really messy.

And honestly? I smiled. Because I knew exactly what was happening in that space. Students were deeply engaged in learning.

Not the kind of learning that always looks polished and tidy while it is happening, but the kind of learning that involves thinking, negotiating, designing, failing, rethinking, collaborating and creating. The kind of learning where children become so immersed in what they are doing that the room around them changes with the process.

To someone else, it might have looked chaotic. To me, it looked purposeful.

As educators, I think we need to reflect on our own reactions to spaces like this. If you arrived at a school first thing in the morning and saw a space like this, what would your first thought be?

Would you immediately see a problem to fix? Or would you stop and wonder what kind of thinking was taking place here?

Because when I looked at that room, I didn’t just see cardboard. I saw students designing ecosystems, constructing stages, testing structures and exploring materials. I saw children solving problems together, adapting ideas when things did not work, communicating their thinking and applying knowledge in meaningful ways. I saw content and skills working together. And that matters.

Sometimes there is a misconception that playful, investigative or creative learning is somehow “less rigorous” than more traditional approaches. But years of research have consistently told us the opposite. Learning becomes deeper and more transferable when students are actively involved in constructing meaning, applying knowledge and connecting ideas to authentic experiences.

None of this is new information. My hunch is, it’s just been forgotten because of competing priorities at a system level. We know that Vygotsky emphasised that learning is socially constructed and strengthened through interaction, dialogue and collaboration with others. We know Seymour Papert’s theory of constructionism further argues that children develop deeper understanding when they actively construct, design and create meaningful artefacts connected to their learning. More recent research through Harvard’s Pedagogy of Play initiative has reinforced the importance of agency, experimentation and playful learning experiences, highlighting that environments which promote curiosity, creativity and active participation can support deeper engagement, stronger problem solving capabilities and more transferable understanding. Collectively, this body of research challenges the idea that deep learning only occurs through passive instruction or tightly controlled tasks. Instead, it suggests that students learn most powerfully when knowledge, explicit teaching, exploration and authentic application work together.

And importantly, this does not mean explicit teaching disappears. I think education too often positions learning as an either/or debate. Explicit teaching or inquiry. Knowledge or creativity. Structure or play. But in reality, the best learning environments are rarely built on extremes. Explicit teaching and messy learning can absolutely co-exist in the same school. In fact, I would argue they need each other.

Students need strong foundations of knowledge, vocabulary and skills. They need teachers who intentionally model, explain, scaffold and guide learning. But they also need opportunities to apply that learning in meaningful, authentic and creative ways. They need space to experiment, test ideas, collaborate and make sense of concepts beyond a worksheet or isolated task.

The cardboard on the floor was not evidence of a lack of teaching. It was evidence that the teaching had gone somewhere. It had moved beyond passive consumption and into application, exploration and creation.

In the current climate, I think creating environments like this requires courage. It is often easier to make learning look neat than to allow it to become dynamic, unpredictable and student-driven at times. Easier to value compliance over curiosity. Easier to prioritise what is immediately visible over the deeper thinking happening underneath.

Schools have to be brave enough to create the conditions where both rigour and creativity can exist together. I feel incredibly lucky that I have been able to build a school alongside staff who care so deeply about this work. Staff who understand that learning is not always silent. Staff who know that engagement sometimes looks like cardboard covering the floor. Staff who value both explicit teaching and rich opportunities for students to explore, investigate and create. Staff who are willing to embrace the complexity and messiness that can come with deep learning because they know what sits underneath it.

That matters. Because productive mess is different from chaos. Productive mess is often where some of the richest learning lives.

Some of the most powerful moments in schools do not happen when every child is sitting silently completing the exact same task. Sometimes they happen when students are sprawled across the floor surrounded by cardboard, debating the best way to make something stand up, redesigning an idea that failed the first time, or proudly explaining why they chose particular materials for a project connected to their learning.

That is the kind of learning I want for children.

Not learning that simply looks good from the outside, but learning that feels real, meaningful and memorable for the students experiencing it.

So yes, when I walked past that room and saw cardboard everywhere, I smiled. Because to me, it was evidence of learning.

~ Bec