Risky Play in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

There has been growing concern in recent years that an emphasis on safety and overprotective supervision of children’s play has reduced children’s access to unstructured, challenging physical play, especially in outdoor environments. This risk-aversive approach in turn has implications for children’s health and development. Increasingly researchers are challenging the impact of this risk aversion on children’s play by highlighting the positive outcomes of risk taking for children’s learning and development. During the early childhood years, children learn, develop, and build social relationships with peers and adults in a dynamic process, and risky play is a key context in which children learn about themselves and their capabilities. As a relatively early-21st-century topic of research, much of the early research originated in Norway and Australia. The Norwegian research generally reflects a more liberal approach to children’s risky play, but more recently, research conducted in other countries suggests there is a growing movement toward the provision of risky play opportunities in Early Childhood Education (ECE) contexts internationally. The research examines a range of individual, social, and environmental factors that influence the extent to which children have opportunities to engage in risky play; that which is reported here reflects diverse contexts associated with ECE from traditional preschools/kindergartens to nature preschools. This article summarizes the research to provide an understanding of the benefits of risky play and how conditions are created for children’s risky play and learning in early childhood education settings. While many of the publications address multiple factors associated with risky play, they have been organized as themes exploring risky play from different perspectives broadly aligned with individual, social, and environmental influences. The first section introduces resources that provide a general overview of children’s engagement in risky play. This is followed by the first of the six themes that have explored factors associated with risk taking in play in the context of early childhood education. Resources within this first theme describe the characteristics of this type of play. The second theme explores the Benefits of Risky Play for Children’s Development And Learning. The third theme, Environments for Risky Play, examines the physical features and resources available in the outdoor environment that promote risky play. The next two themes relate to the main factors that either support or hinder children’s opportunities for risk taking in play: Educator/Practitioner Pedagogy and Attitudes Toward Risky Play, and the ECE policy context. The final theme examines the potential for professional development and strategies for building educator/practitioner knowledge and capacity to support children’s risky play. Together these themes highlight important research within the topic of risky play in early childhood education and provide insight into ways of supporting children to accept challenges and move out of their comfort zone though this type of play.