Risky Play

Anita Bundy, ScD, OT/L, FAOTA, FOTARA is a professor and head of the occupational therapy department at Colorado State University. She has conducted decades of experiments and research in Risky Play. Listen as Dr. Bundy shares both the benefits of risk-taking in play and the developmental costs of being risk-averse.

The views expressed in the following presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of STAR Institute.

Resources Mentioned In this episode:

• Anita Bundy’s bio page, publications and awards at Colorado State University: https://www.chhs.colostate.edu/bio-page/anita-bundy-1189/
  
  
• Sydney Playground Project: https://www.sydneyplaygroundproject.com/
  
  
• Revised Knox Preschool Play Scale: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_604
  
  
• Test of Playfulness (Bundy): https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_299
  
  
• Neumann, Eva: The Elements of Play https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_604
  
  
• Gregory Bateson's concept of “metacommunication”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0732118X9190042K
  
  
• David Ball: Playgrounds - risks, benefits and choices: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/4990/1/crr02426.pd
  
  
• Tim Gill: The Benefits of Children's Engagement with Nature: A Systematic Literature Review: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.24.2.0010
  
  
• Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vxKzmO8AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
  
  
• The Play Outside UBC Lab, led by Dr. Mariana Brussoni: https://playoutsideubc.ca/

Episode transcript: 

Carrie Schmitt 
I'm joined today by Dr. Anita Bundy. She's an occupational therapist, and thank you so much for being here today, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Dr. Anita Bundy 
My pleasure to be here. Thank you, Carrie. I am currently the department head in occupational therapy at Colorado State University. And I've been engaged in labor you search for a long time now,

Carrie Schmitt 
I saw that was an area of interest and research among your many distinctions and awards, and all of the important work that you've done in our field. And when I asked you one of the topics you might be interested in talking about today, you mentioned risky play. And so I was able to, you're able to share some articles with me and I was able to go and look up some of your research, I would love to hear the pathway, maybe or some of the things that you've found early in your research or curiosities about play that led you to study risky play as a research category. And you've done some really important findings on the topic.

Dr. Anita Bundy 
Well, I started studying play as part of my doctoral work. And I was, I was interested in the notion that therapists had and I think still have, but that maybe not as strongly now that i