Thinking critically about the design and (re)design of an outdoor play space at a child care center grounded in new materialism theory.


Laurel Donison, Brock University

The design of outdoor play spaces in child care centers can create particular ways of doing and being which impact children’s play. On one hand the design of spaces may exclude children from certain aspects of the world, however on the other hand children may shape these spaces by their own ways of being and knowing (Spyrou, 2022). The design of children’s outdoor spaces often created by adults can be informed by beliefs and theories about childhood that can implicate children’s worlds (Spyrou, 2022). In early childhood education this includes approaches that are child-centered (Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw, 2018) and often do not focus on the relationality of children’s lives, including the connections and networks with other human and more-than-humans (Spyrou, 2018). In this presentation I draw on my PhD research project at an early childhood education center that focused on children’s daily outdoor play experiences and their perspectives. Grounded in new materialism I “draw attention to the way all matter, human and nonhuman, is agential” (Merewether, 2019, p.106). Following scholars who have highlighted the agency of environments, natural elements and materials within outdoor spaces (see Rautio and Jokinen, 2016; Anggard,2016; Merewether, 2019), I explore the design of the outdoor play space where I did my research. I focus on the way the design shaped children’s daily experiences and also how the children’s relations with the more-than-human world contributed to the design of the outdoor play space. I explore the ways the children (re)designed the outdoor space through their play and discuss how the more-than-human world became entangled in the design. For example, the impact of the seasons and weather on the play space. I also share the ways the children-built connections with snails and ducks through a fence, how they collected water for their play through a drain pipe, their play with puddles and the way the climbing structures became different places for their play. Exploring the ways the children transformed the outdoor space through their play can inform educators, architects and other adults who work with children about the importance of co-designing spaces for children with children. Further it can inspire other individuals to reflect on the way design works and the impacts it has on children’s lives, especially in education settings where they spend a large amount of their awake hours. Using new materialism theory will add to these discussions on design because it draws attention to the complex entangled experiences that emerge in outdoor spaces. Such Engagements with new-materialist theoretical approaches can offer us an understanding of Early Childhood Education and Care that is always relational and interconnected. These theories can move us beyond the limits of approaches that focus only on Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP), individual agency and ontologies of separation (Taylor et al, 2012; Spyrou, 2022), all of which have influenced the design of outdoor of play spaces in the past.

This paper will be presented at the following session: