Affordances of home-school journey as a play and learning environment for rural middle childhood children

Abstract

Outdoor environment has been recognised as the most significant place for children's performances. However, children opportunities for outdoor activities have gradually declined in the past two decades. Generally, children spent most of their times in school and they did not have equal amounts of free time before and after the school period to engage in outdoor activities. The journey to school has been recognized as a place for children to engage with outdoor activities. However, there is lack of concern in children's performance in the home-school journey especially in rural area. Hence, this study investigates the affordances of home-school journey for children's performance in a rural area. The study was conducted at a village of Kampung Sri Gunung Pulai, Johor, Malaysia. A total of 54 middle childhood children, aged 9 to 11 years old, participated in the survey by sharing their home-school journey experiences through drawing, semi-constructed interview and participant observation. The sets of data were analysed using content analysis and were triangulated to build a coherent justification of the children?s performance. The result revealed that the children were highly engaged with perceived affordances compared to utilised and shaped affordances due to the limited time spent on the journey. They were highly engaged with natural elements more than built elements. The positive affordances, as perceived, utilised and shaped by the children, were six times more than negative ones. The study concluded that the home-school journey is important for the children performance and mobility that allowed them to interact with natural elements and permitted them to be physically, socially and cognitively active.