Outdoor Play With Risk Taking: It’s Important

Experimentation leads to learning.

In one of his “Disconnect: The Outdoor Education Podcast” episodes, Joël Charrière, outdoor education and science teacher from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, shared an insightful example from observing his 9th and 10th grade science students and his 2-year-old son.

Charrière explained that his 9th and 10th grade students do science labs where they follow the scientific method: setting objectives, forming hypotheses, collecting data, and analyzing the data to come up with a conclusion.

 “Everyone uses scientific methods all the time,” he said. “You’ve been doing this since the day you were born. It’s how my 2-year-old son figures out his new toys.” He explains watching his son grabbing a square block, trying to jam it in a star shaped hole and figuring out that it wouldn’t fit. “His hypothesis was that this block would enter that hole and when it didn’t, he proceeded to try to smash it into a different hole and proceeds to try it again and again until he realizes, ‘this is not the right block.’ That’s the scientific method – it’s just the way we learn.”

Charrière passionately explained his frustration and wonder when his older students, in his words, “freeze” when writing their hypotheses, raise their hands and ask “what am I supposed to write?” He said “It gets me every time. My 2-year-old has the scientific method down pat, and so did these kids at one point. But somewhere along the way, they likely learned the fear of being wrong. The truth is, and I say this every single time, that it doesn’t matter if your hypothesis is correct or not. Failure is an acceptable option. It’s always accurate in science – you have to learn from it.”

He went on to explain that risk averse behavior started somewhere in these students’ early formative years when they tried things, made their hypotheses, went with it and learned. And somewhere along the way, they lost it.

“They fear so much being wrong. Risky play has a place in mitigating these risk averse behaviors in students. Think about your own teaching for a second – ‘where are my students fearful of taking a misstep?’” 

Charrière explains that allowing children the opportunity to try things consequence-free would help mitigate those fears. He brought in Dr. Mariana Brussoni to share her expertise on risky play.

Dr. Brussoni is Director of the Human Early Learning Partnership, Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Canada. She is a developmental psychologist whose award-winning research investigates child injury prevention and children’s risky play, focusing on parent and caregiver perceptions of risk, and design of outdoor play-friendly environments.  She has published her research extensively and has been widely featured in international media.

As an outdoor classroom design-build company, the term “risky play” made us uncomfortable at first. It’s a term cited often in reference to the benefits of outdoor classrooms, and turns out, it’s critical to a child’s learning and development. In the podcast interview, Dr. Brussoni breaks down the definition as she and Charrière talk through examples.

She explains that the definition of risky play in academic literature comes from Ellen Sandseter out of Norway: “thrilling and exciting play where children are engaging with uncertainty, and where there’s a chance of physical injury.” Dr. Brussoni gave a simple breakdown of the definition, explaining the importance of each component.

“’Thrilling and exciting’ gets at the point that the child is really pushing themselves past their typical limits. They want to see how far they can go, not so far that it just becomes downright scary, but far enough that they feel like there’s a challenge. Then there’s the engagement with uncertainty – the point is they’re doing experiments with the world, with their body, with themselves and what they’re comfortable with, and they don’t know how those experiments will turn out. And that’s kind of the point. With adults, we don’t like children engaging with uncertainty. We like to know that they’re going to be safe and that we can control the situation, so that can be quite a challenge for us. But uncertainty is really important to risky play. The third component – the chance of physical injury - they’re moving their bodies, they’re experimenting - any time you do that, there’s a chance of physical injury. How likely is the chance of physical injury?”

Risk vs. hazard – there’s a difference. Dr. Brussoni shares that risk is a situation where children should be able to make a decision for themselves about engaging in that activity - how high to climb, for example. With risky activities, adults can take direction from the children and provide support to their vision for that type of play.

Her explanation of hazard is something a child might not be able to manage or might not even recognize – a broken slide, playground equipment with damage, or a fast-moving river that’s beyond the abilities of a child to understand and assess the danger.

In their conversation, Charrière shared that many examples of risky play are how he played when he was a kid. “It’s not that far ago that this was just play. All research shows trends over the last few decades to constantly reduce risk to the point of removing or prohibiting activities … in the school setting especially … is there evidence for making things safer?”

Dr. Brussoni explained that the question was the crux of her research. “It’s a situation of a perfect storm of societal forces that have influenced society’s perception of risk and perception of children and parenting and what children should be allowed to do.” She cited several examples and statistics from her research, and the conversation shifted to why risky play is important.

She said that through formal research and in nearly every one of her presentations, Dr. Brussoni asks adults to first think back to their favorite childhood play memory, and second, think about where they were in that memory. The vast majority of people are outdoors and typically unsupervised.

“If you think back to why that memory was so important to you, then it actually comes very intuitive …” Brussoni said. “The deeper we dig with research, the more we find improved relationships and that this kind of outdoor play with risk taking – there aren’t substitutes for it. It really is something that every kid needs.”

 Think about that: “something that every kid needs …”

It’s our job to create an outdoor learning environment where there are intentional, interactive experiences for children, and likewise, a place where adults feel comfortable encouraging children to find solutions to their own problems, manage close calls and figure things out for themselves.

Learn more about how we work and know that we’re here to walk you through the process, answer questions, and address quality and safety standards for your custom outdoor classroom.