Designing for Children's Social Play Affordances

Abstract: While studies regarding children's outdoor play often focus on nature exposure and physical activity, this study explored a lesser-published topic of outdoor play and socioemotional development. The study utilized an online survey of early childhood educators to explore their views on the outdoor play settings and their physical design features that afford solitary, parallel, and cooperative play. We analyzed the quantitative data from the 64 respondents with frequency tables and the qualitative data from 32 of the 64 respondents using an open coding method. The results offer practical implications for architects, landscape architects, environmental designers, and early childcare and education centers to implement environments intentionally designed to afford solitary, parallel, and cooperative play.