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P4Play - european doctorial program for occupational science

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Description

P4PLAY is a doctoral programme for occupational therapists, funded as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action by the Horizon Europe funding programme of the EU. P4PLAY stands for the four dimensions "People", "Place", "Policy" and "Practice" and aims to explore knowledge about children's play and the consequences of a lack of play opportunities in order to develop innovative and creative solutions so that all children can live out their right to Play.

The following two projects are included: - P4PLAY – The evaluation of children’s outdoor play: An instrument of environmental qualities on public playground - P4PLAY – Designing for play combining Universal Design and natural elements in community playspaces P4PLAY – The evaluation of children’s outdoor play: An instrument of environmental qualities on public playground: Playgrounds are considered by children and families with and without disability as important environments (e.g. Lynch et al., 2020). Previous research indicated that playgrounds are frequently built with an adult centred perspective, which do not consider play provision from a child’s perspective (e.g. Burke, 2005). To have the users in mind is especially important when playgrounds need to provide outdoor play opportunities for a diverse population including children with and without disabilities, ages, genders, cultural backgrounds and others. One way to understand play provision on public playgrounds for diverse users is to investigate in environmental qualities of playgrounds. Such an inquirer might give an understanding what playgrounds currently encompasses as well as what might be needed for a good play provision. Moreover, by having the end users of playgrounds in mind an investigation in environmental qualities will allow research and practitioner to identify supporting and hindering environmental qualities in play provision. The overall aim of this research is to develop an evidence-informed instrument that will support the analysis of environmental qualities of public playgrounds, that supports inclusion, and play participation. Secondary aims are to develop a conceptual framework on how the environmental qualities influence outdoor play participation on the public playground from a user perspective in order, first to construct a usable instrument, second to gain consent on test content, and third to determine the cross-regional validity as well as reliability of this instrument. P4PLAY – Designing for play combining Universal Design and natural elements in community playspaces: Outdoor playgrounds are important places for children to play and socially interact with others (Prellwitz & Skär, 2007). However, children with disabilities often face challenges in accessing and using playgrounds (Moore & Lynch, 2015). In order to overcome these challenges, Universal Design has been proposed to design inclusive playgrounds for all children. Despite this recommendation, Universal Design is rarely applied in the design of playgrounds today. Thus, this doctoral project aims to add knowledge from the perspective of children, playground providers and experts in Universal Design to the design of inclusive playgrounds.

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