Risky Play Kvalnes, Øyvind; Hansen Sandseter, Ellen Beate
2023, 2023-02-10
eBook
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This open access book brings together current childhood research and contemporary ethical theory to draw attention to how children depend upon a scope of action for risky play for their mental and ...physical development. In many countries, the opportunities for children to play away from adults' close attention have decreased. At both school and home, protection and avoidance of harm take increasing priority. This book draws a distinction between do-good ethics and avoid-harm ethics to highlight ethical tensions and dilemmas encountered by professionals who work with children, and suggests better ways to balance these ethical dimensions in approaching risky play.
Research on children’s risky play and young children’s risk taking is a relatively new research area that has drawn the attention of many researchers in the last decades. Nevertheless, to our ...knowledge, no earlier studies have measured the prevalence of risky play when children can freely choose what to play, with whom, and where. Most research on risky play has also exclusively focused on outdoor play. This study aims at examining the occurrence and characteristics of children’s risky play, indoors and outdoors, in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. Children (N = 80) were observed in two-minute sequences during periods of the day when they were free to choose what to do. The data consists of 1878 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second by second for the occurrence of several categories of risky play. Results revealed that risky play was registered in 10.3% of the total data material. The data is further analysed to explore distribution among different types of risky play, as well as differences between gender, age and environment (indoors vs. outdoors).
Children's activities and experiences in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions are essential for children's present and future lives. Playing is a vital activity in childhood, and ...playing is found to be positively related to a variety of outcomes among children. In this study, we investigated how risky play – a fundamentally voluntary form of play – related to children's well-being, involvement and physical activity. Results from structured video observations (N = 928) during periods of free play in eight Norwegian ECEC institutions indicated that engagement in risky play was positively associated with children's well-being, involvement and physical activity. The findings in this study suggest that one way to support children's everyday experiences and positive outcomes for children in ECEC is to provide children with opportunities for risky play. Restrictions on children's play behaviours following safety concerns must be balanced against the joy and possible future benefits of thrilling play experiences for children.
Risky play is defined as thrilling and challenging forms of play that have the potential for physical injury and has been linked to development and health benefits for children in the early years. ...These benefits include risk-assessment skills, increased physical activity and well-being, and promoting social competencies and resilience. Currently, in a Western context, children's opportunities for risky play are decreasing and at the same time, childhood inactivity and coinciding health concerns are on the rise. Risky play may help ameliorate some current health problems for children. This research aimed to increase understanding of how children use affordances (environmental factors that intersect with and influence human behaviours) for risky play. Physical environmental factors have been found to influence children's affordances for all play, including risky play. The study employed a deductive analysis of participant-observer field notes and focused-video observations in order to identify how children utilize indoor and outdoor environmental features for risky play. Data was interpreted through Gibson's theory of affordances and was then fit to established taxonomies of environments for children's risky play. Research was conducted with children, ages 3-4 years, at a kindergarten in Norway. Findings identified environmental affordances for risky play that were actualized by children in this study. We propose that findings from this study may be useful in considering the physical design of early childhood education play spaces.
Risk aversive perceptions and practices among ECEC practitioners and parents have proven to be an important reason for the decline of young children's opportunities for free outdoor play. Yet, there ...are also cultural differences in the perception of children's risky play. This study aims at examining the factors that ECEC practitioners and parents experience as barriers for children's outdoor play, especially those associated with risk. ECEC practitioners and parents in five different European countries (Greece, Portugal, Estonia, Croatia and Norway) received questionnaires about their perception of children's outdoor play. The sample consists of 32 ECEC practitioners and 184 parents. Results show that parents and ECEC practitioners from Norway are less risk aversive to children's play than those from the southern European countries. Traffic is a barrier for outdoor play among parents from all countries (above 50%), and stranger danger is particularly noticed in parents from Greece (80.6%) and Portugal (62.9%), whereas in Norway this value is only 13.3%. The mean average age from which parents allow their children to play outside is quite different between the participating countries, ranging from 5.8 years in Norway to 11.8 years in Greece. In total, fear of children getting injured and adults' own concern/anxiety are only mentioned as barriers by 9.4% and 3.1% of ECEC practitioners, respectively. Lack of play spaces (74.3%) and poor play facilities (80%) are also considered obstacles to letting children play outside by Greek parents, whereas Portuguese ones emphasized media alerts (61.3%). Our results suggest a differentiated approach between countries to tackle the reported barriers to children's outdoor risky play.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study assumes that surfaces in outdoor environments in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions exert an important influence on children's play diversity. Gibson (
1979
) claims ...that surfaces are important because they are where most action occurs; some surfaces may lead to a diversity of play behaviours, while others afford a narrower range of actions. This study was conducted as part of a three-year mixed-methods project. The sample consisted of 464 video observations (mean duration: 122 seconds) of 79 children's free play in the outdoor environments of eight ECEC institutions. Multilevel regression analysis, controlled for children's age and gender, indicated that functional play was positively associated with surfaces resistant to deformation (e.g. rubber) and that constructive play was positively associated with surfaces with low resistance to disintegration (e.g. sand or forest floor). These results can help develop and design outdoor environments that facilitate children's play diversity in ECEC.
The objective of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Movement Skill Competence (PMSC) for young Norwegian children, a scale that is aligned with ...skills assessed in the Test of Gross Motor Development- Third Edition. We used convenience sampling to recruit 396 Norwegian-speaking children (7–10-year-olds) who completed the PMSC. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed factorial validity for the proposed three-factor model of the PMSC, encompassing measures of self-perceived ball, locomotor, and active play competence. Internal item consistency coefficients of these sub-scales were acceptable, and subsequent measurement invariant analysis found a gender difference such that boys rated their competence higher than girls in running, jumping forward, hitting a ball (racket), kicking, throwing a ball and rope climbing, while girls rated themselves higher, compared to boys, in galloping and skating/blading. Furthermore, there was a slightly better model fit for boys than for girls. Several items were significantly related to children’s age, and the three-factor model exhibited differential age related factor mean differences across older and younger children. Overall, we found the PMSC to have acceptable psychometric properties for confident use in assessing perceived motor competence among 7–10-year-old Norwegian children, though we observed age and gender differences in children’s responses that warrant careful interpretation of results and further research investigation.
This theoretical article views children's risky play from an evolutionary perspective, addressing specific evolutionary functions and especially the anti-phobic effects of risky play. According to ...the non-associative theory, a contemporary approach to the etiology of anxiety, children develop fears of certain stimuli (e.g., heights and strangers) that protect them from situations they are not mature enough to cope with, naturally through infancy. Risky play is a set of motivated behaviors that both provide the child with an exhilarating positive emotion and expose the child to the stimuli they previously have feared. As the child's coping skills improve, these situations and stimuli may be mastered and no longer be feared. Thus fear caused by maturational and age relevant natural inhibition is reduced as the child experiences a motivating thrilling activation, while learning to master age adequate challenges. It is concluded that risky play may have evolved due to this anti-phobic effect in normal child development, and it is suggested that we may observe an increased neuroticism or psychopathology in society if children are hindered from partaking in age adequate risky play.
Considering how much time most children spend in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions, the psychosocial dimensions of ECEC institutions and children’s well-being represent a growing ...research area within the ECEC field. This paper presents results from a study where children’s experiences of subjective well-being and opportunities for participation in ECEC institutions were explored. Research on children’s own perspectives about their well-being has mainly been conducted among children older than those of preschool age, and therefore this study aimed at highlighting the voices of 4-6-year-old children regarding how they experience their lives in ECEC institutions. Quantitative data was collected through conversations with 171 Norwegian 4–6-year-old children based on an electronic questionnaire. The results indicate that even though many children experience a high degree of well-being in Norwegian ECEC institutions, approximately one-third of them experience a medium level of well-being and close to one out of ten experience a low degree of well-being. The results show that the physical environment, the toys/equipment, the common activities and the opportunity to have an influence on where to move, what to do and with whom are of crucial importance for children’s well-being in ECEC institutions. This also includes children’s opportunity to oppose the staff and negotiate and choose activities that differ from those that the staff select.
Children spend a large amount of time each day in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions, and the ECEC play environments are important for children's play opportunities. This includes ...children's opportunities to engage in risky play. This study examined the relationship between the outdoor play environment and the occurrence of children's risky play in ECEC institutions. Children (
= 80) were observed in two-minute sequences during periods of the day when they were free to choose what to do. The data consists of 935 randomly recorded two-minute videos, which were coded second by second for several categories of risky play as well as where and with what materials the play occurred. Results revealed that risky play (all categories in total) was positively associated with fixed equipment for functional play, nature and other fixed structures, while analysis of play materials showed that risky play was positively associated with wheeled toys. The results can support practitioners in developing their outdoor areas to provide varied and exciting play opportunities.
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