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Children’s Adaptive Behaviour In Performing Outdoor Play And Learning In School Grounds

Children’s outdoor play in school grounds is commonly restrained due to limited spaces and landscape features offered at schools, as well as restrictive school regulations. This research explores children’s adaptive behaviour in performing their play activities in school grounds environment. Fieldwork was conducted with 80 children aged 8 to11 years old from two primary schools in the state of Johor, Malaysia. A qualitative, child-centred approach of data collection was employed to elicit data on children’s behavioural and perceptual responses regarding their play in school grounds. The study revealed different play behaviour patterns and preferences among children regarding the use of school grounds during non-formal and informal learning sessions. The children’s behavioural and perceptual responses showed that they coped with and adapted to the potentials and constraints of their school grounds environment in order to increase play opportunities. It highlights how children used communal and alternative spaces within school grounds, imagined and reinvented the spaces for play, and manipulated the environmental features found as their play tools. The findings indicate the children’s abilities to fit with the environmental discrepancy in order to fulfil their physical, communal, emotional and educational needs through play. This paper argues that children’s adaptive behaviour in performing their outdoor play in school grounds environment involved children’s autonomy, creative thinking, social interaction and problem solving skills, which contributed to children’s environmental learning