There was a time when I would have thought it impossible to be recommending, or even exploring, physical exercise as a good thing in Early Years. Ghosts of my own dire football sessions at Junior School and the humiliations of being so poor at the very skills PE teachers and so many of my peers valued at Secondary School would lurk at the back of my professional discussions about how Early Years teachers should avoid the “PE in the Hall” scenario as much as possible.
Even though those days are long past, it still rather surprised me that I found myself agreeing so much with this publication from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport last year.
I can criticise it for the continuing misuse of Bruce’s term ‘free flow play’ when they say In all three settings we saw the principle of free-flow play clearly enacted, with children moving freely around their space
But this is nit-picking.
To start off, the research suggests that “rare for children not to be physically active when they were outside” (p64), and seems to me to offer compelling arguments for supporting good design of outdoor environments. Most important (from my point of vieew, at any rate) is the clear statement in the report (p66) that
Physically active play in early years appears to be influenced by a range of factors, not least the ethos of the setting and support and encouragement from staff at an individual child level.
It surprised me, for example, that only 9% (p57) of active play was shared with adults, with a spectrum that ranged from intense involvement to little or no involvement., although interventions were observed around behaviour management. In other words, there was some play with chidlren and a lot of supervision. Now, that is not necessarily a bad thing: children play independnetly in the best settings, and a research report that suggests more intervention would be necessarily a good thing would be a blunt intrument indeed.
The variations in intervention are interesting; the correlations between design, adult role, quality and amount of physical play are complex and I need to unpick them a bit further. The case studies (p60ff) are worth reading even if just for their insights into children’s lives in EY settings.
The final section of Ch 6, however, might be of interest as final-year undergraduates and others look for research topics, and is offered here without further comment from me. :
6.5 Recommendations for further research
Further research is needed to build on the work started in this project. In particular:
· childrens’ views of play – eg using the Mosaic approach which uses observation, interviewing and other participatory tools to listen to young children’s perspectives (Clark and Moss, 2000)
· intensity of physical activity in different play activities in early years
· exploring differences between sub-groups of children in early years settings – for example ethnic group, social background, disability/special education needs, geographical variations
nicktomjoe 