Exploring childcare spaces: Young children's exploration of the indoor play space in center-based childcare

This dissertation addressed a topic that has received little attention in research: the relation between children’s exploratory and social behaviors and the spatial characteristics of the indoor play space in center-based childcare. The aim of this dissertation was to investigate how a theoretical framework, inspired by the theory of embodied cognition and based on Gibson’s (1979/1986) concept of affordances, can be used to study young children’s exploration of the indoor play space in center-based childcare settings. Young children were observed using a newly developed observation instrument, based on embodied cognition and perception-action theory, to collect detailed behavioral data on children’s exploration of the play space and play materials. A cross-sectional study, involving 61 children, was conducted in ten age-heterogeneous groups in ten daycare centers to investigate how, during free play, young children, between 11 and 48 months of age, act upon the affordances offered by the spatial components which constitute the indoor play space.
The observation instrument was applied to obtained fine-grained measures on a number of coding dimensions to assess children’s spatial exploration and relevant contextual factors, including the social setting. First the relations between the spatial characteristics of the playroom and the depth and breadth of children’s exploration of the play room space were examined. As a next step we examined how children’s social, parallel and solitary play and non-play behaviors (transition, onlooking, unoccupied) related to the depth of their exploration. Subsequently it was investigated if and how the use of play materials moderated the child’s use of specific spatial components.
The results reported in this dissertation suggest that the physical environment deserves a more prominent place in future studies into young children’s behavior and development in center-based daycare, as well as in quality regulations and monitoring systems that aim to assure quality of care.