Encouraging risky play in outdoor inquiry

Play has a key role in the daily life of children. Children experiment with gravity, test social, political, and physical boundaries, as well as explore what it is like to imagine a role, pursuit, or experience.

The Best Start Panel on Early Learning (2007) identifies play as among its core principles of pedagogy, where educators are reminded that a child's overall learning process encompasses elements of "natural curiosity and exuberance" (p. 15). Indeed, this research body has boldly claimed that "play is how children make sense of the world and is an effective method of learning for young children," going on to further announce that "ideas and skills become meaningful; tools for learning are practised; and concepts are understood" (ibid).

Yet not all play is the same. While much play is inconsequential to pain and distress, other forms of play can seem dangerous, or even downright risky, as life itself is placed in the crosshairs (Gray, 2014a). Playing with matches, using sharp tools, climbing to great heights, and travelling at rapid speeds can invite immediate threat to life and limb, yet the benefits of holding some trust in these actions can lead a child down a journey of expanded self-awareness and personal esteem.

Gray (2014a) reflectively observes that risky play addresses a fundamental evolutionary need in that "one of play’s major functions is to teach young mammals how to regulate fear and anger." Without such forms of play, warns Gray, children become exposed to an increased risk of neurotism and the unnecessary but tragic accompaniment of adult-mediated interventions like psychotherapy. In other words, mammalian-type species, including humans, become crippled without emotional investment in and regular exposure to risky sorts of play. Grey (2014b) provides a more nuanced perspective on the status of the world in the following video:

As Early Years educators, then, how do we encourage risky play in ways that promote the development of resilence and collaboration but minimize the chances of physical pain, injury, or, even worse, long-term disability? The Kindergarten curriculum (2016) recommends consideration of different types of settings as instrumental in pedagogical decison-making on the issue of play. One setting is the expeirence of inquiry. Assuming a stance that welcomes curiosity, wonder, and intrigue allows both children and adults to partake as co-researchers in building knowledge from natural exuberance and wisdom from critical reflection on experience. While inquiry is open-ended in its structure, exposure to unsafe learning conditions need not ensue. Both students and teachers can collaborate on building a safe, accessible, and empowering learning environment for all without sacrificing elements of risk, temptation, and drive into oblivion.

Another key context or setting for developing a sense of risky play is the use of socio-dramatic activities. Whether inside the classroom or outside in the playground, children are given the freedom to explore what it is like to be someone (e.g., painter, pilot, conductor, tour guide, archeologist, physician, athlete, and so on) but guided in these moments through access to tools, invitations/provocations, and opportunities to collaborate with others in meaningful, socially-interactive ways. Students acquire greater insight about the possibilities for themselves and how their decisions impact others in both positive and negative ways. Along the path, "participants in socio-dramatic play communicate with each other using language and symbolic gestures to describe and extrapolate from familiar experiences, and to imagine and create new stories" (p. 20). Socio-dramatic play, therefore, is an rich context that "supports children’s self-regulation and increases their potential to learn as they engage with the people and resources in their environment" (ibid).