Jones, Tamra, Turner, Denise, McGuckin, Teneale, Myles, Louise, Eagers, Jackie, Smith, Moira, Salata, Karen, and Franklin, Richard (2025) Busy playgrounds as hopeful spaces. In: AARE 2025 Conference. From: AARE 2025 Conference, 30 Nov - 4 Dec, 2025, Newcastle, Australia.

PDF (Abstract Only) - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only

Abstract

The competition for discipline space persists within a crowded school curriculum and leads one to think there would be limited time for playground activity. However, this study surfaced that playground spaces are being routinely utilised for physical play or activity albeit in heterogenous ways. Although playgrounds were typically seen by generalist teachers as sites providing them a rest from teaching rather than spaces offering possibility to productively engage students in meaningful and rigorous physical education (PE). It is time for educators to connect and converse about how playgrounds can be used differently and imaginatively to PE related outcomes. Fraser’s justice outcomes of schooling are drawn on to surface examples of recognition, redistribution and representation in selected school sites located in disadvantaged communities. Interests were to learn how the ways pedagogies of engagement could extend the potential for socially-just fundamental movement skills (FMS) opportunities in school contexts. The real sense of hope that playgrounds present is the opportunity for their users, typically children, to be positioned as active participants that take on the responsibility for how they engage with the available equipment. Furthermore, they exhibit a space capable of contributing to redistributive and representation justice processes. Enabling children to be inquirers, both at school and in their local community, to explore how varying playgrounds offer differing ways to move their bodies, not only strengthens connections to their lifeworld’s but allows them to cater for their movement needs and interests. This is particularly significant for children who are commonly classed as disadvantaged and members of minority groups as schools may be the only place where they can access important skills, knowledge and understandings. This includes motor skills with implications for ongoing physical activity and health practices. The findings of the study provoke educators to contemplate the value of democratic schooling. They also elicit questioning how contemporary urban development and living in risk-adverse times might impact children's development. Consideration needs to be given to how the plethora of policies, regulations and rules are restricting young people's opportunities to play and learn through self and peer discovery thereby enabling the blossoming of creativity, imagination, and resiliency. I call on school stakeholders and teacher educators to reflect on how purposeful and contextualised use of playgrounds can make them hopeful spaces capable of producing transformative movement outcomes when innovative practices are used.

Item ID:	90469
Item Type:	Conference Item (Abstract / Summary)
Copyright Information:	© The author(s) 2025.
Date Deposited:	12 Feb 2026 04:56
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390111 Physical education and development curriculum and pedagogy @ 100%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1699 Other education and training > 169999 Other education and training not elsewhere classified @ 100%
	More Statistics