The impact of loose-parts-play on schoolyard social participation of children with and without disabilities:A case study

Background: Outdoor social participation in the school playground is crucial for children's socio-emotional and cognitive development. Yet, many children with disabilities in mainstream educational settings are not socially included within their peer group. We examined whether loose-parts-play (LPP), a common and cost-effective intervention that changes the playground play environment to enhance child-led free play, can promote social participation for children with and without disabilities. Method: Forty-two primary school children, out of whom three had hearing loss or autism, were assessed for two baseline and four intervention sessions. We applied a mixed-method design, combining advanced sensors methodology, observations, peer nominations, self-reports, qualitative field notes and an interview with the playground teachers. Results: Findings indicated for all children a decrease during the intervention in social interactions and social play and no change in network centrality. Children without disabilities displayed also an increase in solitude play and in the diversity of interacting partners. Enjoyment of LPP was high for all children, yet children with disabilities did not benefit socially from the intervention and became even more isolated compared with baseline level. Conclusions: Social participation in the schoolyard of children with and without disabilities did not improve during LPP in a mainstream setting. Findings emphasize the need to consider the social needs of children with disabilities when designing playground interventions and to re-think about LPP philosophy and practices to adapt them to inclusive settings and goals.</p

Mapping Pupils’ Cultural Consciousness:Design and Evaluation of a Theory-Based Survey

Cultural education, in the broadest sense of the word, teaches children and adolescents to reflect upon culture. It teaches them to reflect, using a variety of cognitive strategies, and in different media. According to Van Heusden (2015) et al. (2013), the semiotic strategies of cultural consciousness are also deployed recursively, to make sense of culture itself. Cultural consciousness is thus ‘culture about culture’. It involves reflective perception, imagination, conceptualization, and analysis, engaging with different media groups: the body, artifacts, language, and graphic signs (cf. van Heusden, 2009).Being able to assess pupils’ reflective abilities (i.e., their cultural consciousness) may facilitate the design, implementation and evaluation of cultural education teachers’ practice and allow for an in-depth analysis of the effects of cultural education programs on the development of children and adolescents. Currently, however, we face a lack of empirically tested instruments that are specifically designed to establish and measure cultural consciousness. In this study we aimed at designing such an instrument which would allow us to map pupils’ preferences for particular reflective strategies. In this chapter we elaborate on how theory informs the design and evaluation of a survey that allows for the mapping of cultural consciousness of pupils aged 8 to 14