Playful Learning Landscapes in the United States: Encouraging Intellectual and Social Risk in Everyday Spaces
摘要
The benefits of appropriate risk-taking behaviours are positively correlated with physical, social, and mental health. It is therefore surprising that the past decade has seen a reduction in children’s exposure to appropriate risk-taking opportunities under the auspice of reducing potential harm or litigation. We argue that appropriate risk-taking opportunities allow children, families, and communities to gain fluency in handling risk in ways that foster healthy development. In this chapter, we describe the Playful Learning Landscapes initiative, which transforms public and educational spaces into informal learning hubs. Playful Learning Landscapes installations are created in accordance with the Playful Learning Model, which emphasises community values, the science of how children learn best, and what skills and content children need to learn to thrive to design high-quality informal learning environments. These spaces ignite collective community engagement and prompt children and families to practice intellectual and social risk-taking in safe, playful environments. The framework for creating playful learning hubs that support intellectual and social risk-taking can be broadly applied to the design of spaces that meet the needs of any community.