“…Zosh et al (2018) highlight that playful activities consist of a combination of active engagement, meaningful information, social interaction, iteration, and joy, while playfulness can be related to individual characteristics and capabilities to engage in interaction with others, resolve tensions in different social environments and demonstrate a preference for complexity and problem solving (Hyvönen, 2008;Kangas, 2010;Proyer, 2017). Current playfulness research has mainly focused on children's play and on adult playfulness (Proyer et al, 2019a) and provides evidence on playfulness having positive effects on a person's well-being and emotional state (Maynard et al, 2020), creativity and problem-solving skills (Le Hunt, 2017) as well as supporting individual's emotional intelligence (Hart and Holmes, 2022). All these benefits of playfulness are essential in ECE teachers' work.…”