The power of play

How can we promote young children’s learning and development through play in early childhood education, primary school and organized sports?

Active play is imperative to facilitate physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development of children. In addition to enhancing physical (Poitras et al., 2016) and mental (Biddle & Asare, 2011) health of the growing child, there is a need for further knowledge regarding the role of active play in children’s health and development (Nijhof et al., 2018; Yogman et al., 2018). However, research has shown that early childhood programs are increasingly pressured to add more didactic components and less active play, thereby limiting children’s opportunities and time to behave naturally and learn through play (Sääkslahti, 2021; Yogman et al., 2018).

Given that most children spend considerable time in preschool (93-98%), and all attend primary school, the early childhood and primary school settings may be valuable arenas for promoting children’s health and development (Logan, 2018). Additionally, a total of 91% of all six- to seven-year-old children take part in some form of organized sport activities and/or leisure time physical activities (Nordbakke, 2019), and in resent years we have seen that children are enrolled in organized sport activities and organized leisure time physical activities at increasingly younger ages (Harlow et al., 2020; Logan, 2018; Nordbakke, 2019). Although sports provide invaluable benefits such as physical activity, social belonging and a sense of accomplishment, there is a growing concern that many children experience over-organization. This limits children`s opportunities for spontaneous play, and can lead to stress, dropout and reduced enjoyment of being active. As such, organized sport contexts provide another possible avenue through which to intervene with young children (Harlow et al., 2020; Harlow & Fraser-Thomas, 2021).

Active play is a fundamental aspect of the regulatory documents of kindergartens, physical education in the primary school education, in addition to the regulatory documents of organized sports for children in Norway (i.e., Children’s rights in sports). However, the extent to which these different regulatory documents address active play, whether they use active play in a coherent manner, or if they exhibit large discrepancies in how they view active play as a means of enhancing children’s health and biopsychosocial development is unknown (McInnes, 2019; Yogman et al., 2018). Hence, there is a need to draw on interdisciplinary knowledge and experience to gain a better understanding of how to create optimal and playful environments to support children’s health and development, thereby acknowledging the role of active play in all contexts where children are active participants (Sääkslahti, 2021).