Making Space for Play in Irish Schoolyards

28 Nov 2024

At a seminar held on 28 November, Dr. Michelle Bergin presented a paper on the “Making Space for Play in Irish Schoolyards” project, which aims to evaluate existing provision for children’s right to play in diverse schoolyards and to inform how we can support schools to create conditions for all children to play. The seminar was hosted by the ISS21 Children and Young People Research Cluster & UCC Futures – Children.

ABSTRACT

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2013) General Comment 17 reminds schools of their obligations to provide for children’s right to play. This is underpinned by a significant body of evidence on the importance of play during breaktimes to children’s health, learning, social lives and sense of belonging in schools.  However, recent studies in an Irish context echo international research identifying limited attention in policy or practice to play rights in schoolyards and increasing socio-spatial constraints with inequitable consequences for children with minoritized identities.

“Making Space for Play in Irish Schoolyards” aims to evaluate existing provision for children’s right to play in diverse schoolyards in an Irish context to inform how we can best support schools to create conditions for all children to play. This Research Ireland funded four-phase project will develop a novel analytical framework of play rights indicators; analyse spatial demographic and social data from existing open-source datasets; use survey and play evaluation methods to gather data on different aspects of play provision and co-design case study exemplars of change processes with schools. Drawing on occupational science theorizing on raising occupational consciousness as critical praxis this project invites relationships with school communities, interested individuals and organizations to collectively evaluate differing dimensions of the existing situation towards informing practice possibilities.

BIOGRAPHY

Michelle is working on a Government of Ireland postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Clinical Therapies, and lectures on the BA(Early Years and Childhood Studies) at UCC. She qualified as an occupational therapist in 2001, and has worked in acute, rehabilitation, forensic mental health, disability and community services nationally and internationally. She completed an interdisciplinary MSc in Disability Studies in 2009 (University College Dublin) and a PhD in Occupational Science in 2024 (University of Technology Lulea, Sweden & UCC, as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early-Stage Researcher on the first trans-European Occupational Therapy doctoral training programme P4Play). Michelle’s doctoral research explored play and practices in Irish schoolyards as an issue of occupational justice.