Do children create standardized playgrounds? A study on the gap-crossing affordances of jumping stones

Jongeneel, Douwe; Withagen, Rob; Zaal, Frank T. J. M.

doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.09.003

Cited by 38 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Variability in a play environment is a key property which can invite adaptive movements, as Withagen and co-workers have pointed out [9,19]. So why are some environments too symmetrical: for example playscapes for children?…”

Section: How Affordances Can Enhance Opportunities For Physical Activmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These exercise and play environments are built by adults in a standardised fashion, despite the evidence from children that they prefer (i.e. will design games incorporating) non-standard, varying environmental features for play [19]. The work of Jongeneel et al [19] critiqued the 'omnipresent standardisation of playgrounds' (p 45), which may have been built and designed by adults, to create a 'risk free' area, without consideration of children's developmental needs.…”

Section: How Affordances Can Enhance Opportunities For Physical Activmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…will design games incorporating) non-standard, varying environmental features for play [19]. The work of Jongeneel et al [19] critiqued the 'omnipresent standardisation of playgrounds' (p 45), which may have been built and designed by adults, to create a 'risk free' area, without consideration of children's developmental needs. Well-designed play environments contain many variable opportunities to achieve the same movement goal, giving people experience in adapting their behaviours to dynamic contexts.…”

Section: How Affordances Can Enhance Opportunities For Physical Activmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Designing Affordances for Health-Enhancing Physical Activity and Exercise in Sedentary Individuals

2016

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Ideas in ecological dynamics have profound implications for designing environments that offer opportunities for physical activity, exercise and play in sedentary individuals. They imply how exercise scientists, health professionals, planners, designers and engineers, and psychologists, can collaborate in co-designing environments and playscapes that facilitate physical activity and exercise behaviours in different population sub-groups. Here, we discuss how concepts in ecological dynamics emphasise the person-environment scale of analysis indicating how physical activity environments might be (re)designed into qualitative regions of functional significance (affordances) that invite health enhancing behaviours according to individuals' capacities and skills (effectivities).Key Points: 1.Exercise uptake and adherence is influenced by thoughtful design of environments. 2.A multidisciplinary approach to physical activity is best able to initiate the required design features. 3.Designers for physical activity must understand the relationship between functional aspects of the environment and individual characteristics.

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Section: How Affordances Can Enhance Opportunities For Physical Activmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Affordances Can Enhance Opportunities For Physical Activmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Affordances Can Enhance Opportunities For Physical Activmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Designing Affordances for Health-Enhancing Physical Activity and Exercise in Sedentary Individuals

2016

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“…To that end, we used a similar method as Jongeneel et al [4]. Two round pieces of carpet were used with the same diameter as the stones of the playground (60 cm).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a study on how children create their own jumping stone playgrounds, Jongeneel et al [4] found that the vast majority of children constructed a configuration with varying gap widths. In the discussion of their paper, they argued that such nonstandardized configurations are to be preferred to standardized ones for two reasons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration

2017

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Over the last years, the omnipresent standardization of playgrounds—the distances between, for example, jumping stones tend to be equal—has been criticized by both scientists and architects. First, it has been argued that standardization fails to do justice to the variability in the children’s action capabilities. Second, it might simplify play in that children repetitively cross over the same distance and, thus, do not have to worry about their movements anymore. In the present study we examined the gap-crossing behavior of children in both a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration. Children, between 5 and 10 years of age, were to play in each configuration for two minutes. No significant differences between the configurations were found in the number of gaps the children crossed and the percentage of jumps (ps>0.05). However, more children crossed a gap that they perceived as challenging (i.e. gap width close to their estimated maximum jumping distance) in the nonstandardized configuration than in the standardized one. Interestingly, significant differences were found in variables reflecting the children’s action preparation—the variation in both the time on a jumping stone and the numbers of steps on it was bigger in the nonstandardized playground than in the standardized one (ps<0.05). The implications of these findings are discussed for both the design of playgrounds and the academic discussions about them.

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Early Childhood Education Environments: Affordances for Risk-Taking and Physical Activity in Play

Wyver

Little

2018

Physical Activity and Health Promotion in the Early Years

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Do children create standardized playgrounds? A study on the gap-crossing affordances of jumping stones

Cited by 38 publications

References 24 publications

Designing Affordances for Health-Enhancing Physical Activity and Exercise in Sedentary Individuals

Designing Affordances for Health-Enhancing Physical Activity and Exercise in Sedentary Individuals

Gap-crossing behavior in a standardized and a nonstandardized jumping stone configuration

Early Childhood Education Environments: Affordances for Risk-Taking and Physical Activity in Play

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