‘It is riskier’: preschoolers’ reasoning of risky situations

Risk is a fundamental component of well-being and is interconnected with all aspects of child development. The aim of this paper is to explore children’s (N=50) own perspectives and perceptions of risky situations. Semi-structured interviews and images as props were used. Children aged 5-6 years were asked to identify and discuss about five risky activities based on Sandseter’s (2007) categorisation of risky outdoor play. Responses indicated as risk causes situational aspects of the contexts, the age of the actor and natural hazards. The presence/absence of other/s seemed to have an impact on identifying risky vs riskier conditions and physical harm was recorded as a negative outcome. Such findings reveal that causal strength, probabilistic inference, future reasoning and linguistic capacity are connected with children’s reasoning of risk; in this direction, pedagogical activities on risk could be implemented from the ‘safe’ early childhood classroom