94: Research Review - The Environmental Taxonomy of Outdoor Play Space Features
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Therapy in the Great Outdoors, the podcast where we explore the business and practice of nature based pediatric therapy of all kinds. If you're an outdoor loving pediatric practitioner in the fields of occupational, physical, or speech therapy, social work, or mental health, this podcast will help you start and grow a successful nature based practice or program.
I am the ever honest, always a hundred percent real. You'll hear it all on this podcast. Dr. Laura Park Figueroa. I'm a pediatric OT with over 20 years of experience and I run a thriving nature based practice with profitable locations in two different states and multi six figures in revenue. I also host the free online community at therapyinthegreatoutdoors.
com to help you pursue your nature based therapy dreams too. Are you ready to take action on those dreams? Let's jump [00:01:00] in.
Hello everyone, welcome back to Therapy in the Great Outdoors. This is going to be a research review episode, which I have heard from you all that you enjoy when I do these research episodes and I have not done one in such a long time. I think it has probably been 20 or 30 episodes of the podcast since I've done one of these research reviews, and the reason is that I was so burned out on research after doing my PhD.
When I finished last May, I pretty much just did not want to look at research ever again for the rest of my life. I don't know if other people feel as traumatized by their PhD as I did, but I, love research, and also, it was just, I don't know, most of you listening, if you've done any kind of therapy program, you probably understand that when you've done something [00:02:00] very intensely for five years, you have a just need a break from it.
So I am just now feeling like I want to do a research review episode again. So in these type of episodes I basically take an article, I look for an article that is applicable to nature based therapists, and I take that article and give you the just of what they did in the research, and also share my thoughts on some takeaways on how to apply that research to our practice as nature based pediatric therapists.
The article that I chose is called Using the Theory of Affordances to Understand Environment Play Transactions, Environmental Taxonomy of Outdoor Play Space Features, a Scoping Review.
This is by Morgenthaler, Lynch, Loebach, Pentland, and Schultz. And it's It was [00:03:00] published in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy, July August 2024, volume 78, number 4. I looked for a very recent article. I wanted to find something that was very recent and related to our work outdoors with children.
And this article, if you don't know, a scoping review is a type of research in which the researchers are just looking to see what is out there, what is already published. They're not doing an assessment of the quality of that research necessarily the way you would with a systematic review, which we all know is the pinnacle of really great, high quality evidence based research is to find a systematic review, right?
But a scoping review takes a broad look at what is available in the research. And this is a really cool publication because what the authors did was They took evidence from a previous scoping review they had done, and then they were looking [00:04:00] at the relationship between environmental characteristics in outdoor play spaces, and what children actually did in those spaces.
So what did their outdoor play look like? And from that, they developed an environmental taxonomy to support the analysis of play affordances in community play spaces. So in the non academic language, basically what they did was they created this giant table, which is a taxonomy. It describes things, right?
That shows what the environmental feature was and what types of play was. observed in those spaces. So some of this, I will admit, is intuitive to you if you are, especially if you're an OT, because as OTs, we look at the environment and how it impacts how children play, right? That's just something that we do in our [00:05:00] work.
This will be educational for you if you are a speech therapist, physical therapist, or mental health counselor as well, because I think this is a really important piece of the work we do is understanding how the environment of nature whatever environment we're in in nature, all nature environments are complex and different, right?
Understanding what that environment will elicit in children? What type of play will that environment elicit and bring forth can really impact how we offer our therapy services and help us do more effective therapy. And I do think that we understand as therapists that changing the environment can actually change a child's type of play that they do in that environment.
But I think the more research we have and these authors have done a good job in this study of showing that concept in the actual research. [00:06:00] Good research often makes explicit what experienced therapists intuitively know, right, what we do naturally. And I will probably talk more about that as I go through and describe what they did in this research.
Okay, so I told you the objective of the study. It was to look at that, what's in the environment and how it impacts play. What these authors did was they took peer reviewed literature from 1974 to 2023. So from this previous scoping review that they had done. And they used those studies to look for keywords and any synonyms of the words playground, environmental qualities.
and children with or without disabilities. So they looked at all of those studies, and they included the studies that provided descriptions of physical environment play activity transactions. So this is [00:07:00] very OT speak language. I have to tell you guys, sometimes in the OT profession, I feel like we use big words to describe very simple things.
And the more, I actually think that's a problem with our profession because I think it makes people confused and not understand what we do. While I understand that these authors had to use academic language to, to publish a study. But basically what they're saying is, They're looking at studies that describe how kids play in different environments.
So they used the analysis of those articles to form an environmental taxonomy. And that taxonomy included 14 space and object categories that were defined by their functional qualities and they were linked to different play types, play affordances.
So this theory of affordances I will get into in a minute, but it's basically that looking at what a, environment invites or allows a child to do in play. The authors of [00:08:00] this study created an array of 284 play occupations. That's like different types of things children did in play. And they linked those with different environments in which those occupations happened.
So, let's get into what they did here. They started by explaining that I want to read to you the description that they have here of what a play occupation is. Okay, so as an OT we describe play as an occupation because it is something that a child does that , they engage in and occupies their time.
A play occupation is characterized as a subjective experience of joy arising from participating in freely chosen intrinsically motivated and self directed, meaningful occupation. Play occurs in transaction between the child and the environment with a focus on the engagement process [00:09:00] rather than the end result.
This is a huge thing for me. I think a lot of times we as therapists think that there has to be some end result. Like we make a craft project with a kid to show that we worked on fine motor skills. And a huge piece of the treatment approach that I developed, the Contigo approach is that we are focused on engagement rather than an end product or an end result.
And I love seeing this in the OT literature and I love that they start off the article by defining this because it is such a joyful, when we hear that description, we resonate with it. We feel that it describes what we see when children play. It makes our hearts happy as adults to see children engaged in this subjective experience of joy arising from freely chosen, intrinsically motivated, and self directed meaningful occupation.
So I love that description there. Okay, so they go on in the article to talk [00:10:00] about how a lot of times in therapy, We are focusing more on this adult directed objective that we have for kids, and they are advocating for a practice shift away from concentrating solely on individual factors and attempting to fix impairments, and instead emphasizing context and environmental focused approaches of creating participation opportunities and experiences. So I love that as well. This article has such good writing and it's very beautiful writing about the experience of what I think we should be doing in nature based therapy for children. And so they're advocating for this idea of really looking at the environment as a way to offer participation opportunities for children.
Okay, they get a little bit into this idea of the theory of affordances, and this was Gibson's theory from 1979. This is something I cited in my dissertation research as well [00:11:00] as in the Contigo approach, the nature based treatment approach I developed. Affordances are described as possibilities for action that someone perceives and may then actualize in their physical environment.
So as I previously mentioned when I mentioned this theory, we're looking at what does the environment offer to a child. For them to do. Okay, so you can look at functional things that the environment invites, such as like a slide would invite climbing up and sliding down, right? Or a tree trunk that has fallen would invite it.
children to stand on it and balance. And
the authors here state an interesting thing that says, affordances offer a way to assess an environment's play value by identifying potential affordances, as opposed to counting environmental features, such as play components in play spaces. So [00:12:00] it's hard, right? Because in some ways, identifying the features, you have to do the next step of thinking, of critical thinking, right, to say, what does this allow a child to do?
What does this afford for the child? So rather than just counting things in the environment okay, there's three trees and there's seven low branches. I don't know. I'm like, clearly I haven't thought out a good example here. But they're suggesting that we need to be looking at environments for what they offer rather than just looking at features of the environment. There is a lot of research that suggests that natural environments offer a greater variety of potential affordances, and they cite some of those here, I cited some of those in my research as well and
they also mention some other assessment tools that have been developed But that the purpose of this study was to develop a robust evidence based taxonomy [00:13:00] as a foundation for conducting future environmental analyses of existing outdoor play spaces for potential play affordances. So the cool thing about this study is that the taxonomy they developed may help you if you are a therapist who, one, wants to create your own space in your own nature area for offering nature based therapy services, or if you want to be a consultant.
So this is something that could help you. This taxonomy they developed, this very extensive chart that they developed, will help you analyze different spaces in order to ensure that you're offering children a variety of different play affordances. Okay, I talked already a little bit about how they selected the studies.
They had a previous scoping review they had done and then they went back to look at all of those articles to then find articles that met the criteria for this study. So the things that they used as inclusion criteria were that they need to be published in either English or German, [00:14:00] which is really interesting to include two languages.
That's, that extends their reach already. That's great. They had to be peer reviewed. They had to involve populations of children with and without disabilities ages 0 to 12 years. They had to be articles focused on investigating free play, for example, not exercise or restoration or learning. They had to be articles about play in community outdoor play spaces, for example, at schools or in public spaces.
And the articles had to describe both social and physical environmental qualities of outdoor play. So they found They found 49 studies in the previous scoping review they did met all inclusion criteria and then two more studies were found through manual searching. So they had 51 studies that they included in this.
The research question guiding this study was, what is known about the functional, physical, environmental qualities of [00:15:00] spaces and objects in community play spaces and their relation to affordances for children's outdoor play activities? And again, the main objective was to develop an environmental taxonomy.
Okay. Let's get into the data here. All right,
what they did was they coded, they went through all of these studies and they coded different child environment transactions. So basically they read the studies and reviewed them and they wrote down different ways that the children were playing in the environment. And they coded for the location and the functional qualities of the space where the play occurred and any objects and materials or functional qualities of objects and materials used during play.
So they, they basically were coding for what children played, where the children played and with what the children played. And the result was that they developed this. Like I said, this [00:16:00] huge list of different, in the article, it's a shortened version in the article, but they have so many different ideas here in this chart the chart is three pages long, and That is the abbreviated version.
There's a full list that is in the supplemental material for the article, but basically what it does is this chart that they developed the taxonomy, which was the end purpose of the study, The chart that they developed is what I think you can use to analyze your treatment sessions and then add in any elements that you don't have in your treatment sessions.
It serves as a really great kind of helping to wrap your brain around and think about what types of play activities are going on in your treatment sessions. And then if you see something on this chart that You haven't seen kids do or that you don't offer that yet. You can then expand the children's play by [00:17:00] finding an environment that would invite that kind of play.
So basically what the taxonomy looks like is it is a chart and on one side, it says physical environment category. So it has the physical environment. So some of the things listed under that column in the table. are open spaces, paths and walkways, enclosed and bounded spaces on the edges, sports areas play equipment.
There's a bunch here. I won't go through all of them. So they, the first column there is the physical environment category. So what is the physical environment? How would we describe it? And then in the middle, they have the environmental functional qualities. So what are the qualities of that environment?
So for example, for open spaces, the environmental functional qualities are that they are primarily flat. They're mostly open. They offer space between play equipment or built structures and natural features. They're not too cluttered. And they can have a variety of ground surfaces, solids, soft or loose [00:18:00] material.
They might have subcategories such as grassy open spaces with hard surfaces, etc. So that's the description. It's the description of the space. And then the last column is titled examples of play occupations afforded by the environment. In the open spaces column, they have different play occupations listed here, such as running, riding, driving, or skating, pulling things, doing handstands, backflips, or jumping.
And then watching objects that roll or spin, playing floor is lava, playing soccer, playing tag, sitting, standing, and picnicking. So you can see where those are just a variety of the different play occupations that they have there. And remember, they identified 284 distinct play occupations.
So if you get access to this article and you get the supplementary material, you can look at all of these different things that they have listed and think about different [00:19:00] treatment activities that you could bring into your sessions that would invite some of these play occupations. And also then when you find one that you don't have in your sessions or that you've never maybe done with children.
You can see what area it is linked to and then bring kids into those spaces. So, for example there is a category here, which I mentioned, a physical environment category of enclosed and bounded spaces. If you think about your treatment session and you realize that you have never had the children, this is maybe rare, but you've never had the children build a small fort or build a small enclosed or bounded space.
That is something that really can change the way that children play because they have that semi private area in order to have small conversations or to be alone with another kid and have their own secrets away from adults, right? So there's lots of like it [00:20:00] says here, social opportunities such as sitting with peers is listed under the play occupations.
So I do think that this table that they developed here, this taxonomy, can really help nature based therapists to think about how much play, how many different varieties of play are we including in our sessions for children. So I highly recommend getting this article. It is not publicly available.
That is the hard thing. I have a hard time sometimes when I do these research reviews because the article is not publicly available. You may reach out to the authors. Sometimes you can get an article by reaching out to the authors. If you don't have access to it, it is for anyone who's an AOTA member.
If you're a member of the American occupational therapy association, you can find it in AJOT, the American journal of occupational therapy. The other thing that I think could be helpful from this taxonomy they developed is that you could link your goals to the different play occupations [00:21:00] that are in the chart and discover different ways in which you might work on those goals in different environments because they're showing what different environments bring out in children.
And one thing I want to speak to in particular is SLPs. So if you're a speech therapist listening to this, your ears should have just perked up because they have a whole section in this article about how they give an example of chatting and talking with peers as play. So that part of play is just chatting and talking with peers and They suggest that chatting and talking were most supported by five environmental categories, which were play equipment, features not purpose built for play, such as seating, enclosed and bounded spaces, spaces on the edge, and fixed natural features.
So they go into a huge description of how each of those are related to chatting and talking, but I [00:22:00] hope that gives you a little example of how. This study seems to help us as nature based pediatric therapists link the qualities of an environment with the type of play that might happen in that environment.
And for speech therapists in particular, I'm using them as an example, it might be interesting to look at what areas. Facilitated talking and chatting more because that's exactly what you're trying to get kids to do more in your treatment sessions if you're an SLP is to talk or communicate more or more effectively, right?
That is just a good example there. Alright, some takeaways here from the discussion.
Again, the name of the taxonomy that they developed was the Environmental Taxonomy of Outdoor Playspace Features, and it was based on evidence for actualized affordances, play occupations, and synthesized into a taxonomy of potential play affordances as an [00:23:00] outcome. The taxonomy describes connections between environmental characteristics of spaces and objects, and their potential play affordances in shaping Play occupations.
Do you guys see how wordy OTs make things? I know that the authors, it's not a criticism of the authors, they had to write for an academic publication, but I just feel like it could be said so much more simply to say, we looked at what the environment offers for play. Okay, so they found 14 distinct environmental categories, they linked their functional qualities and the play occupations that were afforded in those environments.
So a couple things here that they mentioned that I thought were worth including in this podcast episode were they highlight that the physical environment is not a passive backdrop to play, but an active component of play. And I think if you are a nature based therapist, you probably believe this already. But again, it's really important that we have research [00:24:00] that says these things, because this is what we need as nature based therapist to bring nature based therapy more into the limelight of this is actually a legitimized way to work everybody. So, I think it's really important that they pointed that out.
They also suggest that play spaces that provide a range of different space and object categories have the potential to support a wider variety of play. And again, we know this intuitively as therapists, right? When there are more opportunities in an environment, kids play in more complex ways.
And I have a few applications to practice here from their discussion. So first they suggest that the taxonomy they developed offers a way to have a shared environmental terminology. So when we're using the same words to describe things, this can facilitate [00:25:00] collaboration among professions if we all use the same words.
So that is one thing that if we all use this taxonomy and it becomes used in practice this can be a way for us to talk to designers and other providers and policymakers and researchers about improving the outdoor play spaces of children. The second takeaway they have here is that the taxonomy helps us shift away from an adult centered point of view to a child's view of what can I do here in the environment.
So, Adults tend to look at play spaces as what does it contain? But children want to know what they can potentially do there. And so this helps move us to think about what is offered to children in a play space and then hopefully helps us design play spaces and qualitatively describe the play spaces [00:26:00] in a way that goes beyond just saying, we have a play structure and we have a slide and whatever.
Or, we have five trees and we have an open area for them to run in but actually thinking about all of the different types of play that can occur in those environments. A more qualitative analysis is what it facilitates, this taxonomy. Okay. And then the third takeaway is that the taxonomy could be used they say by occupational therapist, I think it's actually much more valuable for other people too, but to evaluate play spaces for potential play affordances and inform better playground design and modifications.
So like I mentioned at the very beginning when I dove into describing this article this taxonomy could really be used to kick off your consulting business to consult with schools about how to create play spaces that actually are developmentally appropriate for children and expand their play.
Along those lines, they do make a comment, and I think it's important to mention as well, that this [00:27:00] taxonomy can be used to expand the opportunities for all kids including kids who have disabilities this It allows for inclusion of diverse kinds of play when you use a taxonomy like this to make sure that you're including a variety of different things that allow more kids to participate in different types of play.
So it's an accessibility issue as well.
Now I'm just going to read a few sentences from the conclusion to wrap us up. This scoping review provides a deeper understanding of the transactions between the physical environment and children in outdoor play. By drawing on the theory of affordances, this study emphasizes the significant role the physical environment plays in shaping children's outdoor play occupations.
The environmental taxonomy of outdoor play space features, introduced in this article, the provides a valuable tool to describe and analyze play spaces and could be used to justify environmental [00:28:00] intervention in schools and public playgrounds, to create spaces that enable diverse play occupations in order to maximize play value. All right, I highly recommend you guys get a copy of this article. I will put a link to AOTA in the show notes or where you can buy a copy if you want to buy it. I do feel like this article because of the supplemental material where they give you the whole taxonomy, I do think it might be worth it if you are not an
aOTA member to actually purchase the article. I believe there is a way to do that so I'll link to that in the show notes. So what do y'all think? I would love to know what you think about this article. Drop a comment in the post inside of the Therapy in the Great Outdoors community. We always make a post for the podcast and you can always post any questions you have for me there.
All right, I'll talk to you guys next week. Bye!
Hey, before you go, if this podcast has helped you in your nature based work, will you take [00:29:00] one minute to leave a five star review for the podcast, wherever you're listening right now? It helps me keep producing free content for you when I see that it is actually having an impact in the world. So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much for doing that. And now go get outside and enjoy therapy in the great outdoors. See you next week.
