‘Real Play Families’: a New Zealand case study

ABSTRACT

This case study examined the experiences of three New Zealand families selected to participate in a four-week ‘Real Play Families’ project. The overall aim of the project was to explore the issues faced when embedding traditional, unstructured, and largely unsupervised play practices in the modern family environment. The project commenced with an initial workshop day, including a two-hour information seminar for parents, real play activities for the children, and a combined debriefing session. Data from parent and child focus group interviews and social media postings were reviewed to generate a comprehensive, triangulated picture of the experiences of each family. The analysis focused on how the families derived meaning and value out of real play, drawing upon their initial perspectives, experiences, challenges, and post-project reflections. Our findings suggest that providing families with appropriate advice and social support around real play can prompt positive and rewarding outcomes for children and parents.

KEYWORDS:

• Real play
• family
• free play
• risky play
• children
• case study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Simon R. Walters is a senior lecturer in the School of Sport and Recreation and his areas of expertise include children’s experiences of organized sport, side-line behaviour, and athlete-centred coaching.

Associate Professor Scott Duncan is the Head of Research of the School of Sport and Recreation. Areas of expertise include the measurement and classification of physical activity, programme design and evaluation, curriculum-based health and wellbeing interventions for children, and determining the effects of the built environment and daily mobility on health outcomes.

Julia McPhee is the research manager of the Human Potential Centre and manages the centre’s research projects, with a focus on Pacific-based research.

Dr Denise Atkins is a senior lecturer in the School of Sport and Recreation and is discipline leader for Health and Physical Education.

Dr Sarah-Kate Millar is also a senior lecturer in the School of Sport and Recreation and her research interests include a focus on enhancing coaches’ effectiveness through the use of constraints when working with athletes. Increasing coaches’ self-awareness of their own coaching and how this impacts on athlete learning is also a keen area of interest.

ORCID

Simon R. Walters http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6467-4982

Scott Duncan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8402-2930

Notes

1 In NZ, the ‘bush’ refers to the native forest, which once covered most of the land.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from Persil, a brand of Unilever. The funder had no academic or commercial control of the design and implementation of this study, or of the study’s findings.