Outdoor loose part materials mediating collaboration in primary play spaces

This study is about outdoor unstructured play with recycled loose parts materials by primary school aged children. Specifically, it is an exploration of how loose parts play materials mediate the creation of intersubjectivity leading to collaborative behaviours between children. Using a micro-ethnographical approach, this study explored how groups of primary aged children (10-11 years old) from the same year group in a school located in Queensland, Australia used outdoor recycled loose parts as tools to create shared understandings and meanings leading to the construction of collaborative interactions and outcomes. Framed by sociocultural theory, verbal and non-verbal gestures, utterances and physical manipulations of the loose parts