Injury risks during outdoor play among Swedish schoolchildren: teachers’ perceptions and injury preventive practices

Abstract

Approximately 36,000 Swedish children seek medical care annually because of injuries during school time. The purpose of this field study is to investigate risky outdoor play at the school yard and to describe teachers' perceptions of risk and safety in relation to learning and development. The study includes observations of children (6-12 years old) during outdoor activities as part of the school's activities and includes focus-group interviews with teachers and children. Children were seen climbing high in play facilities, speeding down slides, or competing with sticks in the woods. Different views of risk and safety among the participants influence outdoor play activities. Teachers' knowledge of risk seems to be derived from common sense and personal experiences rather than from a professional perspective. A joint approach of educational and medicine disciplines is desirable when it comes to children's health and development.

Perceived Barriers and Facilitators of Adventurous Play in Schools: A qualitative systematic review

“…Two of these studies were conducted in Australia [29,30], one in Turkey [26] and one in the UK [32]. Three of the four articles were published in peer-reviewed journals [25][26][27], the remaining article was a Masters thesis [32].…”

“…Five studies were included in the narrative synthesis (see Table 3), four of which were peer reviewed journal articles and one was a non-academic published evaluation report [21]. The research was conducted in New Zealand [19], Sweden [27], Australia [28], The Netherlands [31] and the UK [21].…”

“…Finally, Niehues et al, [28] focussed on a risk-reframing intervention offered to parents and educators to change perceptions of risk in children's outdoor free play. The remaining two studies examined teachers' perceptions of risk and safety in children's risky outdoor play [27] and professional attitudes towards children's risky play [31].…”

“…The participants in the studies were primarily educators and professionals working in schools [28,31] which included school leaders [19] and teachers [27]. In Niehues et al [28] parents also participated in risk-reframing sessions alongside educators.…”

“…The methods of data collection varied, often multiple methods were used within the same study (see Table 3). The methods included qualitative interviews [19,21,28], questionnaires with open-ended responses [31], focus groups [21,27], observations [21,27], brief evaluations [28] and recording of risk-framing sessions [28]. To analyse data, two of the studies used thematic analysis [19,21], one study used a social analysis [28], and two studies used content analysis [27,31].…”