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Welcome to the PEDAL Hub

We’re the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development, and Learning based in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. We conduct world-leading research on childhood and mobilise knowledge to help to improve children's lives and life chances.

A key aim of the PEDAL Hub is to bring play research and ideas to families, schools, charities, researchers, policy makers, and play enthusiasts! To quickly find articles, videos or other resources relevant to your areas of interest, you may want to take a look at our searchable Resource Library.

Learn more about PEDAL

PEDAL Conference 2025

Join us at PEDAL’s 2025 Conference to celebrate our 10th anniversary and a decade of play and early years research! Hear more about what the future of play may look like, from new technologies to working together to ensure a future where play is valued and inclusive.

Learn more and book tickets

Our Projects

We’re making new discoveries about the value and impacts of play on babies, children, young people, families, schools, and communities. Through our projects, we’re developing play-filled ways to support children’s learning and development.

Learn more about our projects

Play in early relationships

We’re developing playful ways to help lay the best foundation possible for babies and children across the globe.

Play and health

We're exploring the power of play in healthcare contexts and in supporting both children's physical and mental health.

Play and learning in schools

We’re supporting educators to use evidence-informed playful approaches to learning in their teaching.

Play, communication, and neurodiversity

We’re investigating the role of play in language development and communication, with a focus on neurodiversity.

Play and policy

We work to ensure that knowledge from research is mobilised to help policy makers to improve children’s lives and life chances.

Our Vision

We strive to ensure that the work we do here at PEDAL is translated into real-world impacts by generating tools and resources for families, communities, and practitioners, and by developing initiatives to spark change in services, policy, and practice.

The LEGO Foundation

Our founding funder is The LEGO Foundation. Since receiving the first LEGO Foundation donation in 2015, their funding has enabled PEDAL to conduct rigorous research into the importance of play and playful learning in children’s lives.

Undertaking this work has allowed us to make a significant contribution to addressing critical gaps in the current knowledge base on play.

 

 

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