Children's play, well-being and involvement: how children play indoors and outdoors in Norwegian early childhood education and care institutions

Storli, Rune; Sandseter, Ellen Beate Hansen

doi:10.1080/21594937.2019.1580338

Cited by 71 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…The data collection involved systematic and randomized video observations of two minutes during children's free play sessions. Results from the first data collection are described in previously published studies (Sando, 2019;Storli & Sandseter, 2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The intervention had to be low-cost and each institution had 1000 euros that could be spent on the intervention. The overarching aim for the intervention was to promote play, and specifically to increase children's possibilities for symbolic play in the outdoor environment and for functional play in the indoor environment, as environments supporting these play types seemed to be lacking in the first data collection (Storli & Sandseter, 2019). This article focuses on the promotion of functional play in the indoor environment.…”

Section: Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Supportive indoor environments for functional play in ECEC institutions: a strategy for promoting well-being and physical activity?

Sando

Mehus

2019

Early Child Development and Care

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The physical environment in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institutions provide children with possibilities for play. This study describes a physical environmental intervention aiming to increase the possibilities for functional play in the indoor environment, and its influence on children's well-being and physical activity. The intervention involved the establishment of a tumbling space with soft surfaces, mats and big construction materials. The sample consists of video observations of 65 children's free play in seven ECEC institutions at two data points. Multilevel regression analysis indicates that children's physical activity and functional play is strongly related to the use of a tumbling space, and that the intervention group had a higher increase in functional play following the intervention compared to the control group. The impact of the tumbling space on well-being is limited. The results indicate that targeting children's possibilities for functional play may be beneficial form a health promotion standpoint.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supportive indoor environments for functional play in ECEC institutions: a strategy for promoting well-being and physical activity?

Sando

Mehus

2019

Early Child Development and Care

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“…Many studies to date have utilized a play typology to help categorize children's play behavior in relation to an outdoor environment [13,14,[18][19][20]. These studies often use a previously developed play type scale (or an adaption thereof), the most prevalent of which are Frost's Play Observation Form [21], Hughes' Playworker's Taxonomy of Play Types [22,23], and Rubin's Play Observation Scale [24][25][26].…”

Section: Rationale For the Development Of A New Outdoor Play Observatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In his own work, for example, Frost found that what he calls functional or exercise play was often intricately woven with dramatic or constructive activities [21]. Some studies have dealt with this issue by adding a mixed play category to be able to account for situations where the play reflects several of the other play types without one being dominant [19]. After years of field observations of play, the authors too continually struggled to accurately categorize play activities using a single play type, and in consequence, reported low levels of inter-rater reliability across multiple observers.…”

Section: Key Lessons and Innovationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tool for Observing Play Outdoors (TOPO): A New Typology for Capturing Children’s Play Behaviors in Outdoor Environments

Loebach

Cox

2020

IJERPH

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Engagement in play has been definitively linked to the healthy development of children across physical, social, cognitive, and emotional domains. The enriched nature of high-quality outdoor play environments can afford a greater diversity of opportunities for play than indoor settings. To more effectively design outdoor play settings, we must better understand how the physical environment supports, or hinders, the different types of play which suit children’s needs and interests. However, play typologies or observation tools available to date do not adequately capture the unique characteristics of outdoor play. This paper outlines the development and testing of the Tool for Observing Play Outdoors (TOPO), a new typology of outdoor play, as well as a systematic field observational protocol which can be used to effectively depict children’s behaviors in outdoor spaces, as well as evaluate the play environment itself. The tool can be deployed in either a collapsed or expanded form to serve the needs of a wide range of studies and environments. This new tool represents a significant advance in the ability to fully and effectively study and plan outdoor play environments to provide more diverse, high-quality play settings that will support the healthy development of children across the spectrum.

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“…Viewing play as a fundamental need and right of all children offers a powerful construct to legitimise and secure the place of play in the lives of young children (Kernan 2007). For play to appear, children need an environment to play in, and in ECEC institutions, competence in how different qualities and features in the play environment could support different kinds of play (Storli and Sandseter 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamic relationship between outdoor environments and children’s play

2020

Self Cite

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Play is a fundamental activity for experiences, learning and development among children in their early years. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions' play environments, their features and design, are therefore of great importance for the opportunities provided for children to create and engage in a wide range of play. This study examines how children utilise features in the ECEC outdoor environment (spaces and materials) to engage in different types of play. Children (3-6 years, N = 86) 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 to register the type of play occurring, the space in which it occurred and the materials children used. The results indicate a dynamic relationship between the outdoor environments and the play in which children engage and point out the complex nature of playground design, where planning for the predictable, and at the same time opening up for the unpredictable, is important.

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Children's play, well-being and involvement: how children play indoors and outdoors in Norwegian early childhood education and care institutions

Cited by 71 publications

References 31 publications

Supportive indoor environments for functional play in ECEC institutions: a strategy for promoting well-being and physical activity?

Supportive indoor environments for functional play in ECEC institutions: a strategy for promoting well-being and physical activity?

Tool for Observing Play Outdoors (TOPO): A New Typology for Capturing Children’s Play Behaviors in Outdoor Environments

The dynamic relationship between outdoor environments and children’s play

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