An ecological study of children outdoor free play in pre-primary school"

This research is particularly focused on investigating “the motion game behaviors in outdoor settings” in Primary school children and in their incidence in promoting development in different dimensions (particularly the ecological one): The ecological dimension of this study of outdoor free play presupposes that, human interrelationship with ecosystems basically implies a psychophysical interrelationship with the environment. The present work focuses on the theme of children outdoor free play in pre-primary school, and it constitutes a part of a wider investigation, conducted by the Department of Sciences of Education, of Bologna University, which had as a principals purpose the study about some emerging aspects related to "educational cares" (Contini, M. & Manini, M., 2007). According to our opinion, we consider that the pedagogical attention regarding the phenomenon of play, represents a subject of fundamental importance in the action of care, in consideration that the play activity results a decisive factor for the individual development (Smith, D. ,1995; Tsao L., 2002). This matter, anyway, has already been underlined by many authors, in issues that are become "classicals" of the pedagogic literature: among others, it’ sufficient enough to remember the writings of Bruner (1976), Piaget (1945), Vigotskij (1979), Winnicott (1971). But we like to make mention of the one who, at first, in our (western) culture, has introduced this attention towards the educational importance of the play, Karl Groos (1895), just to remember that: "children don't play because they are young, but they are young because they must play". Among the different aspects were it was possible to investigate in depth, we choosed to focus our attention on the motion game behaviours in outdoor settings, observing children in courtyards or in school gardens, as this dimension probably represents, in subjects whose age is in the present work considered, the principal means of psychophysical relationship with environment (Le Camus, 1980; Pellegrini, A.D. & Smith, P. K. 1998). After all, we agree that play develops numerous functions supporting the individual development, implementing different aspects of the person, among whom the followings can be named: biological, through the development of the organic functions; cognitive, quoting Piaget, we can sustain that the motion experiences develops the logical categories, the spatio-temporal perception, and so on; social, expressive and communicative: thanks to the fact that usually children play in group, they are somehow "tied" to keep in relationship and communicate with the others children; emotional, since the true motivation to the action lies, in last analysis, into the e-motion, that literally means "movement from"; decisional, the game usually forces to take decisions in very short time, and this stimulates autonomy and assumption of responsibility; from the educational ECER 2008. Ceciliani, A. & Bortolotti, A., “An ecological study of children outdoor free play in pre-primary school” 2 point of view, this last element represents, perhaps, the most peculiar contribution, and still the less acknowledge, of the physical play and game experiences (Parlebas 1997). We finally take care to underline in a particular way a last issue, but not for this reason less important, that is we could ascertain, in the work on the field, as a fundamental and not eliminable presence, that the affective and relational aspects ―enter" in the free play and gives to it form, as to say, ―from inside‖. Therefore, it can be affirmed that the lived game becomes often direct expression of players social interactions (McElwain, E.L. & Volling, B.L. 2005; Stremmler, A. J. & Sluss. D. G. 2004), index of their degree of friendship or, on the contrary, of hostility; consequently this dimension results able to underline others issues strongly connected to the first one, as the differences of gender, social class and ..