Expert Recognition
International Acclaim for Anji Play from Leading Education Experts
Dr. Tovah P. Klein, Ph.D.
Barnard College, Columbia University
Associate Professor, Psychology
Director, Barnard College Center for Toddler Development
Author of "How Toddlers Thrive" and “Raising Resilience”
Expert in children's early social and emotional development
On Ms. Cheng's Visionary Leadership
"She is a true visionary for children. Ms. Cheng spent the past quarter century implementing her vision to benefit children."
"Ms. Cheng saw a problem where no one else did: lack of joy in children's learning. Knowing that joy and love are building blocks of childhood, childhood the foundation of competent adults, she sought change, developed and revised methods by observing children."
"With no model for change, she created one. Listening to children is an increasingly rare ability, one that Ms. Cheng embraces."
On Revolutionary Educational Approach
"Asking teachers to step back and watch is a remarkable idea as most educators believe we must TELL children what to do. Instead, Ms. Cheng learned from the children-- non-interference, letting children play."
"She created an environment with simple, culturally anchored materials where children have and implement ideas. Anji Play provides children space to play out ideas with loving support of teachers."
On Profound Impact on Children
"The enormous impact of Anji Play on children cannot be underestimated. It creates a child's world, a stage for children to become their best selves by exploring, experimenting, creating, stumbling, flailing and figuring it out."
"Extended periods of time to work with open materials enables children to make choices, implement decisions and figure things out; adults nearby but not leading."
On Critical Skill Development
"This environment supports critical thinking and problem solving with opportunities for children to think about what and how they want to play. These are key for thinking and problem-solving skills and the ability to work out problems with others, negotiate, compromise and cooperate."
"As children problem-solve, they learn to regulate emotions and work out differences. Compassion stems from such interactions. These are the foundational human qualities developed in childhood and needed for societies to thrive."
"The deep exploration supports focus, attention and critical executive function skills."
On Risk-Taking and Self-Development
"Risk taking evolved in Anji Play as Ms. Cheng's stance to watch children and see what they need gave room for children to try new ways of exploring, large or small. In taking risks, children develop a strong sense of self and their bodies, feelings of competence, perseverance from within and goal attainment."
"Goals are set and driven by the children. These internal motivations underlie children's learning."
On Teacher Transformation
"Ms. Cheng's innovation places deep respect and responsibility on the role of teachers. Anji Play teaches adults to step back, watch and listen, with loving support. This is an intentional and active stance that puts the child at the center and the adults in a supportive role."
"Taking a 'step back' allows teachers to learn about the needs of the children and sets them up to listen to children, something that is not done enough today."
On Comprehensive Impact and Global Potential
"The work of Ms. Cheng has pushed children's worlds and teachers' roles to extraordinary heights. Her deep trust in children and teachers is evident in the risk taking and vast exploratory play of Anji Play."
"This environment supports all aspects of development including thinking, academic skills, peer interactions and getting along in a community. Parents are embraced as they learn about the approach and advocate for it as well."
"Anji Play is truly radical in its approach and can be applied in communities large and small worldwide to better the lives of children and society. This is the vision and work of Ms. Cheng."
Dr. Ben Mardell, Ph.D.
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Principal Investigator, Pedagogy of Play (POP) project
Collaboration between Project Zero and LEGO Foundation
35+ years as early childhood educator, researcher, and teacher educator
On Global Educational Significance
"Ms. Cheng's leadership of the kindergartens in Anji has transformed early childhood education in her home county, and her work with Anji Play has inspired early childhood educators throughout China and around the world."
"At a time of growing recognition of the importance of the early years, and simultaneously, confusion in many circles of what learning experience for young children should involve in formal settings, Ms. Cheng's work is of particular importance."
On Extraordinary Learning Environment
"The morning I spent at the kindergarten did not disappoint. Arriving at the school I found the children outside, engaged in a host of exciting projects: building with big blocks; creating a riverway in a large sand box, rolling tires down a two-meter high ramp, and using pumps and hoses to move water."
"The scene was remarkable: hundreds of three, four and five-year-olds deeply engaged, working together and seemingly very happy. All with little or no adult direction. These young children were in charge of their learning."
On Advanced Learning and Reflection
"What happened next was equally impressive and important as children don't learn from experience alone but on reflecting on their experiences. Returning to their classrooms children first drew and wrote about something they had learned about during their time outside."
"A twenty-minute conversation about how the angle of the ramp affected the movement of the tires ensued, with children carefully listening to each other, agreeing and disagreeing, and building a collective understanding of the physics principles involved."
On Future-Ready Skills
"Except for the size of the people involved, I could have been in a graduate school seminar. I could easily imagine in twenty years these children sitting around a conference table, designing a new generation of solar energy generation systems. They knew how to work together and enjoyed doing so."
On Systemic Educational Transformation
"Creating a compelling classroom—where children experience the joy of learning and meet important learning goals--is hard work. Creating an entire school where the adults have created a culture where children learn from and with another is a major accomplishment. To transform an entire system where across schools children from all backgrounds in a community are experiencing transformative education, is nothing short of miraculous."
"Ms. Cheng's educational practice is impressive."
On Worldwide Impact
"Word about Anji Play is getting out. Across China and around the world early childhood educators are learning important lessons regarding how to keep play in the forefront of children's learning experiences. As play is a core resource for learning, this is a vital lesson that Ms. Cheng has to share with the world."
Dr. Peter L. Mangione, Ph.D.
WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies
Director, WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies
Five visits to Anji County programs
On the Transformative Learning Environment
"I have visited the extraordinary Kindergarten programs that Ms. Cheng developed in Anji County, China on five occasions. Each visit I found myself transported to a world where children were fully engaged in significant learning."
"Through Ms. Cheng's leadership and creativity, innovative environments and practices offer to young children amazing possibilities for learning as they determine their play."
On Children's Advanced Learning Capabilities
"The children use minimally structured equipment and materials to build complex structures that require thoughtful design and problem solving. Much of the children's play I observed is collaborative and coordinated. While engaged in play, the children continually add complexity. One child's idea leads to another's."
"Their play reflects learning in all developmental areas—social and emotional, cognitive, language and communication, and physical development."
On Ms. Cheng's Educational Philosophy
"Ms. Cheng's educational approach starts with trust in children's competence and a belief that children will constructively engage in learning and develop the capacity to judge risk as they take on new challenges."
"She and her teachers watch for joy in children's eyes as the children engage in learning. They interpret enthusiastic engagement as an indicator that the learning environment is matching the children's interests."
On Children's Physical and Self-Regulation Development
"I've observed hundreds of children in the Anji Kindergartens. They are physically fit and enjoy active physical play. Whether engaging in large muscle play or finding delicate balance points when building a block structure, the children demonstrate an ability both to self-regulate and co-regulate their play."
"Children move through the environment skillfully and confidently—with great joy."
On Reflective Practice and Advanced Learning
"A key aspect of the Anji Kindergartens is that children reflect on their play and learning. Each day children create play stories by drawing pictures that depict details of their play. They dictate to their teacher the stories underlying their play."
"The children's stories reveal their active engagement in advanced symbolic play as they construct complex designs with blocks and creatively build play structures with ladders, boards, and other pieces of equipment."
On Collaborative Scientific Inquiry
"One discussion I observed focused on play with balls and ramps. The children offered different theories about what affected the speed and acceleration of the balls going down the ramps, questioned each other, and together reached a more advanced understanding. They were young scientists at work, collaboratively wondering about each other's ideas."
"Their developing ability to engage in collaborative inquiry is preparing them for future academic challenges."
On Community Impact and Global Potential
"Ms. Cheng has effectively promoted understanding of her educational approach in the communities the Anji Kindergartens serve. The value the teachers, parents, and community place on the Kindergartens was evident in every site I visited."
"I believe the educational practices that Ms. Cheng and her colleagues have developed can inform and enhance efforts to provide high-quality early education not only throughout China but also internationally. Ms. Cheng's innovative approach enables children to develop skills and knowledge that establish a robust foundation for success in school and in life."
Dr. Sherry M. Cleary
City University of New York
University Dean for Early Childhood Initiatives, City University of New York
Co-chair, Governor Andrew Cuomo's Early Childhood Advisory Council
45+ years in early childhood education
On Ms. Cheng Xueqin's Exceptional Impact
"In my 45 years in the field of early childhood education I rarely meet an individual who has been as creative, industrious, driven, and successful as Ms. Cheng."
"I witnessed many miraculous events during my visit – all as a result of Ms. Cheng's brilliance, wisdom, and most important – her deep and comprehensive understanding of young children."
"As I observed Ms. Cheng's work over several days I understood that I was seeing both her genius and her graceful humility."
On Anji Play's Revolutionary Approach
"To call her work innovative seems small. She has taken her understanding of the nature and needs of young children and created a philosophy and practice that is both unique and extremely powerful."
"Her approach to early childhood empowers the child to follow his instincts and interests to pursue sophisticated learning in an environment where calculated risk enhances each and every cognitive connection."
On Comprehensive Child Development Impact
"Children engage in healthy respectful interactions that counteract any tendency towards bullying or other inappropriate behaviors. Children learn to resolve potential conflict and perhaps more important, they learn to cooperate with each other, function as a part of a team, and to listen to each other's viewpoints."
"Through their active and developmentally appropriate active play the children are healthy and learn about their bodies in space, therefore contributing to their safety now and in the future."
On Global Significance
"She is a remarkable woman who has pioneered an approach to early childhood education that can benefit the entire world."
"The implications of Ms. Cheng's work on behalf of young children impacts family health and stability."
Dr. Bo Stjerne Thomsen
LEGO Foundation
Vice-President and Chair of Learning through Play, LEGO Foundation
Global Head of Research
On Anji Play's Global Significance
"I've been visiting some of the most significant and innovative educational approaches world-wide across Europa, USA, China, South America and Africa, and the Anji approach represents a truly innovative methodology in which carefully selected materials are used for co-construction and reflection, and thereby creating a dialogue of discovery between the child, peers and the teacher."
On the Educational Impact
"I have been sincerely impressed by the sensitive approach to and respect of children's learning with the use of play materials and local environments to support the capacity of any child to discovery their potential and develop the critical skills for the future."
On Ms. Cheng Xueqin's Leadership
"Ms Xueqin Cheng has a unique ability to combine the practical reality of children's learning with the public policy and managerial support, and to integrate this into a curricula scalable not only in China, but across the world."
"Ms Cheng communicates wisely and authentically to any audience, and has been able to role-model the practices for teachers as well as define a whole new language and quality for the community, parents and policy-makers to bring together a new vision that can transform our education system as a support of children and young people throughout life."
On Global Educational Reform
"In my dialogues with partners, research and practitioners, we often come across Anji Play, the community and the work of Ms Cheng and her collaborators, as an example we hope will change how we develop the competencies of any child to deal in a more uncertain and changeable world, but at the same time with the true essence of the environment, community values and social responsibility, that will make us able to reform education systems around the world."
Cas Holman
Rhode Island School of Design & Heroes Will Rise
Tenured Professor of Industrial Design, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)
President, Heroes Will Rise
Featured in The New Yorker, Metropolis Magazine, and Netflix's Abstract: The Art of Design
On Discovering Anji Play
"When I first witnessed an Anji Play school in 2015, I was blown away. I had been designing 'innovative playgrounds and learning materials' for 15 years at that point, and while I had success with risky play and loose parts, I had never imagined a model that placed such deep trust in children. I realized I had been designing for what adults would allow children to do, rather than what children were truly capable of. Ms. Cheng designed for what children are capable of, in ways that allow them to discover their own potential—which far exceeds our expectations."
On Professional Inspiration and Collaboration
"I have been honored to work with Ms. Cheng in standardizing some of the Anji Play materials. As a professor and designer, my work has been featured in The New Yorker, Metropolis Magazine, and in the Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art of Design. In each of these contexts, it was critical to include Ms. Cheng and Anji Play as the ideal example of child-directed, open-ended, hands-on play. The production team even traveled to China to film Ms. Cheng and the Anji Play schools. She and Anji Play are an immense inspiration to everything I do, and I believe Anji Play can have a huge impact on pedagogy in the United States."
On the Transformative Impact of Anji Play
"Ms. Cheng has made huge strides in early childhood development with her 'True Play' statement. The principles of Anji Play are both revolutionary and intuitive, allowing children to learn in ways that are natural and deeply effective. Children develop problem-solving, creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking through unstructured play, with important lessons in risk-taking, confidence, and health. This approach builds resilience and active lifestyles in a time when passive entertainment dominates."
On Social Development and Lifelong Skills
"Anji Play fosters crucial social skills by giving children the space to collaborate, compromise, and mediate conflicts largely without adult interference. These skills are central to adult life but are often a secondary priority in traditional systems. Ms. Cheng's method is innovative and refreshing because it helps children develop these skills organically, while maintaining the curiosity and individuality that define childhood."
On Global Significance
"In the long term, Anji Play equips children with the ability to navigate the world safely and independently. It promises to push early childhood education globally away from rigid technical instruction and toward frameworks that honor self-discovery, joy, and authentic growth."
Transform Education With Us
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