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The authors take a reflective journey to explore the research methodology utilised in a multi-method, multi-site research study of children's environmental learning in schoolgrounds in Australia. Informed by an extensive literature review and dialogue with researchers around the world, the study constructed a research design and procedure that could be utilized by practitioner researchers and academic researchers as the foundation for further research on children's learning in schoolgrounds. This paper has the specific task of sharing our research story and lessons learnt as a conversation to those who intend to conduct future research with children on schoolground greening projects.

Background: We assessed the effectiveness of a simple intervention for increasing children's physical activity, play, perceived competence/social acceptance, and social skills. Methods: A cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted, in which schools were the clusters. Twelve Sydney (Australia) primary schools were randomly allocated to intervention or control conditions, with 226 children (5-7 years old) selected randomly to participate. Data were collected at baseline and after 13 weeks. The intervention consisted of introducing recycled materials without an obvious play purpose into school playgrounds and a risk-reframing workshop for parents and teachers. Results: Children from the intervention schools increased physical activity and reduced sedentary time while control schools decreased physical activity and increased sedentary time. The intervention yielded increases in total accelerometer counts (ß = 9350 counts, 95% CI 3490-1522, p = 0.002), minutes of moderate/vigorous physical activity (MVPA) (ß = 1.8 min, 95% CI 0.52-3.12, p = 0.006), and reductions in sedentary time (ß = -2.1 min, 95% CI -3.77-(-0.51), p = 0.01). Although the changes in time spent in play and nonplay were not statistically different (p = 0.08) the effect size (d = 0.27) indicates clinical significance. Conclusions: This intervention was effective for increasing MVPA during recess and demonstrated capacity to improve play opportunities in school playgrounds.

This paper reports the results of risk reframing, an intervention to offer parents and educators a context for building new and complex perceptions of risk in children's outdoor free play. Our objective was to alter these adults' perceptions of risk to increase the sustainability of an innovative child-centred playground intervention. Qualitative data in the form of audio-recordings of risk-reframing sessions, brief participant evaluations and field notes kept by project staff were collected and either transcribed in their entirety or summarised in brief written reports. These data were subjected to constant comparative analysis to identify emergent themes. Results suggest that educators and parents benefit from opportunities to share risk perceptions and discuss the costs and benefits for offering outdoor free play to children to achieve their common goals for children: health, happiness and resilience.

Play and playgrounds provide essential experiences for young children's growth, development and enjoyment of life. However, such play experiences are now limited for many children due to excessive fear of risk, or "surplus safety". In this article, the authors examine the pervasiveness of surplus safety in the lives of young children. They argue that restrictions now imposed on children's play to promote safety may, paradoxically, expose children to more serious short and longer term threats of illness and limit children's life opportunities. By comparing experiences from Australia and Norway, the authors demonstrate that surplus safety is not a necessary outcome of living in a modern Western society.

School playgrounds offer everyday opportunities for physically active and social play that combats obesity, develops skills, and promotes well-being. However, teachers' fear of the legal consequences of injury can elicit over-zealous risk reduction with the result that playgrounds lack challenge, and the potential benefits of play become limited. In this research, we trialled a simple, cost-effective strategy to encourage children to be more active and social on a school playground. Over 11 weeks, we made available materials with no fixed purpose (e.g. car tires, boxes) to a playground of children aged five to seven. Accelerometers showed children became significantly more active. Interviews with teachers suggested children also became more social, creative, and resilient. However, despite no incidence of injuries, teachers perceived an increased risk and encountered dilemmas regarding duty of care. We conclude that future interventions should address issues of 'surplus safety' at individual, school, system, and policy levels.

Introduction: Children with disabilities often experience unsupportive environments that restrict their play opportunities and inclusion on the school playground. This exclusion can perpetuate inequities for children with disabilities, with lifelong implications. The Sydney Playground Project uses a simple, innovative intervention consisting of placing recycled materials on the playground and engaging parents and educators in risk reframing sessions to create increased playground choice, control, independence and inclusion for all children. Methods: The purpose of this study was to learn from participants about the utility of the intervention for promoting choice and control among children with disability on the school playground. Data included evaluative interviews with 27 school staff (teaching assistants, teachers, therapists, school leadership) across five participating schools after completing of the intervention. Analysis was thematic and explored prominent ideas first within schools, and then between schools. Results: Prior to the intervention, participating school staff focused on active supervision to support play and student needs. During the intervention, school staff experienced role shift and confusion as they allowed the children increased independence while using the recycled materials and learned to navigate how much independence to give the children. Children engaged in increased imaginative and social play, and school staff adopted higher expectations of children's capabilities. Conclusion: Interventions such as the Sydney Playground Project that collaboratively shift adult perceptions to focus on the capabilities of children with disabilities and increase the supportiveness of the physical environment have great promise in increasing play choice and inclusion on the school playground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Providing children and adults with opportunities to engage in manageable risk taking may be a stepping stone toward closing the gap in life conditions currently experienced by young people with disabilities. We aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of a simple, innovative program for 1) changing the way parents and teachers view manageable risk-taking for children with disabilities and 2) increasing the level of responsibility that children take for their own actions, as seen on the school playground.Methods/design: We will employ a cluster repeated measures trial with six Sydney-area primary-school-based programs for children with disabilities. The intervention comprises two arms. 1) Risk-reframing--teachers and parents will participate together in small group intervention sessions focusing on the benefits of manageable risk-taking; 2) Introduction of play materials--materials without a defined purpose and facilitative of social cooperation will be introduced to the school playground for children to use at all break times. A control period will be undertaken first for two school terms, followed by two terms of the intervention period. Outcome measures will include playground observations, The Coping Inventory, qualitative field notes, and The Tolerance of Risk in Play Scale.Discussion: New national programs, such as Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme, will place increasing demands on young people with disabilities to assume responsibility for difficult decisions regarding procuring services. Innovative approaches, commencing early in life, are required to prepare young people and their carers for this level of responsibility. This research offers innovative intervention strategies for promoting autonomy in children with disabilities and their carers.Trial Registration: Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registration Number ACTRN12614000549628 (registered 22/5/2014). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oil vulnerability is likely to impact upon one group of citizens - children - in critical ways, since children have borne a special brunt of a car-dependent culture. Children's freedom to explore the city has been curtailed, in large part because of the perceived risks of traffic and 'stranger danger'. Children are over-represented in road fatalities involving cars and pedestrians and cyclists. Children are also subject to chronic conditions associated with inactivity such as obesity. In order to address this situation, advocates of child-friendly cities have suggested measures to increase children's independent mobility (CIM) and encourage children's active transport. In this paper, we argue that there is a conflation of CIM and children's active transport, which perpetuates the separation of children from adults. To take both children's rights and desires seriously, as well as to take into account the concerns of parents, the active transport needs of both groups must be addressed simultaneously. One cost effective and immediately available strategy is to reduce car speeds in order to minimise the damage to all users of active transport. A holistic understanding of urban transport and children shows that reducing speeds produces the co-benefits of increased health and reduced reliance on oil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how the location of motorsports events is an integral part of the marketing of the sport of motor racing and of all its attendant commercial interests. Case studies of the major motorsports events staged in public street circuits in Australia are used to illustrate how the locations have particular symbolic significance that adds legitimacy to the sport of motor racing, and the messages and impacts associated with these events. The paper examines the wider significance of allowing special public spaces in cities to be used for motorsports events, and contends that the marketing of sporting events should not be considered independently of the major challenges facing the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores links between sport and health, focusing on a range of health outcomes of staging motorsport megaevents in significant public spaces in Australian cities. The article argues that an oversimplification of the links between sport and health produces a cultural filter that diverts attention from the negative health outcomes of sport. A major contribution of this study is the consideration of economic health and environmental health as well as public health. The interactions between these types of health are considered in a more holistic assessment of links between sport and health. The article concludes that the symbolic location of motorsport events in Australian cities both reflects and reinforces societal values that have important implications for health, both now and into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Current road safety programs and thinking in Australia are constructed within a paradigm that tends to accept existing cultural arrangements. Such programs therefore, favour symptomatic solutions and technical and/or physical solutions as a way forward. Fundamental redesign of cultural arrangements is necessary in order to challenge the “culture of speed”. Our research is developing a holistic, social ecological model for reconnecting road safety with communities that value quality of life and slower ways of being. Improving road safety through reduction in the volume and speed of motorised traffic is integrally related to enhancing health and fitness, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and improving neighbourhood planning and community cohesion. In this regard, community-based travel behaviour change initiatives are deserving of much greater attention in the road safety area. As well as these changes at the personal and community scale, policy changes to urban and transport planning that address the broader issues of sustainability in an era of climate change and peak oil can also be linked to improvements in road safety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Drawing on the findings of an ARC funded project, 'Children's Environments and the Role of School Grounds for Enhancing Environmental Cognition', this paper explores the question: What is the role of school grounds as sites for teaching and learning? Observation and interview data for five Australian primary schools displayed large differences between schools in the types of play that 8- to 10-year-old children engaged in. In particular, play behaviours categorised as involving environmental cognition were not observed at all in one school, yet were the dominant play behaviour observed in another. The paper explores the relative importance of the school ground environment and the (outdoor) educational philosophy adopted by the school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sport of motor racing provides various public health messages and impacts. Positive messages include road safety campaigns aimed at discouraging drink driving. Negative messages include the sponsorship of racing teams by cigarette companies. Locating motorsport events in significant public places can magnify any health messages or impacts of motorsport in two ways. First, the total local impact of the motor racing events (e.g. through pollution or disruption to healthy modes of transport) is greater in city street circuits than in dedicated racing circuits away from urban areas. Second, the symbolic characteristics of locations with special significance and meaning can enhance the impacts on health by adding legitimacy to the events, thus helping to promote products or activities that either undermine or support public health. This paper explores the health messages and impacts of major motorsport events in Australia, and argues that the distinctive geographies of Australian motorsport work to exacerbate the negative impacts of motorsport on public health.