Unprogrammed and incidental spaces on school grounds are important to children’s physical play. The rate of sedentary time among primary school children and the associated health problems are on the rise in Australia and elsewhere. Increasing children’s physical activity levels is recognized as one way to address this problem. The fact that children in Australia spend about 30 hours per week at school suggests that schools can play an important role in promoting children’s activity levels. This study focused on a single aspect of the physical outdoor environment of schools -- unofficial paths -- to examine their role in supporting physical play. Unofficial paths are “paths that have not been designed deliberately to facilitate movement patterns but are perceived and utilised by children throughout the school grounds.”
Three Australian public primary schools with contrasting physical characteristics participated in this study. Researchers used three data collection methods -- walking tours, focus groups and behavior mapping -- to assess how children used unofficial paths for physically active play. They conducted 78 walking tours with children individually or in pairs. Each walking tour took approximately 15 minutes, during which the children determined the routes. Questions posed during the walking tours related to children’s preferred physical play during recess, the areas of the school grounds used for these activities, and ways in which the school ground spaces impeded or supported these activities. A total of 47 children, divided into 18 groups, participated in focus group discussions. Questions addressed in these discussions were similar to those raised during the walking tours. The researchers conducted 60 behavior mapping sessions in areas of the school grounds that contained popular unofficial paths to identify associations between children’s physical play and the environmental characteristics of these areas.
Overall results showed that children had three main reasons for choosing unofficial paths during outdoor play: (1) the paths offered affordances for their preferred physical play activities; (2) the unofficial paths were less crowded than the main spaces of the school grounds; and (3) these paths were not constantly supervised by the school staff. The data revealed four key consistent physical characteristics of unofficial paths that supported children’s physical play activities. The paths featured affordances for physical play: they meandered around the school grounds, had soft, smooth surfaces that made them safe for running, and offered multiple connections and a continuous flow, which added to the complexity of chasing games.
These results indicate that unprogrammed and incidental spaces on school grounds are important to children’s physical play. School ground design and school regulations should be consistent with, rather than in opposition to, this importance. “This study demonstrates the value of participatory research with children for identifying children’s view of child–environment relationships.”
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