In PHQP 0004 Learning Is Risky, Jeff explores how children must navigate physical, social, emotional, and intellectual risks as part of their development, emphasizing the importance of hazard mitigation over risk elimination in early learning settings. He also digs into the importance of differentiating between Dangers, Hazards, And Risks. Plus, hear about the latest Amazon Idea and, of course, the Dad Joke of the Week!

Episode Video

Watch Now: PHQP_0004 Learning Is Risky

Episode Notes

• Danger
• Hazard
• Risk
• Risky Play
• 4 Types Of Early Learning Risk Taking
• Understanding Danger, Hazard, And Risk
• Ellen Sandseter’s 6 Categories Of Risky Play
• Embracing Risk
• 3 Hazard Categories
• 5 Hazard Mitigation Strategies

The Learning Is Risky Transcript

Welcome to the Playvolution HQ podcast. I’m Jeff Johnson. Thanks for pushing play on with the show.

So I’m out for a walk in the neighborhood after a thunderstorm and a neighborhood kid sees me and starts coming in my direction and he quickly realizes my dog Gigi isn’t with me. And he looks crestfallen because he was really more interested in seeing the dog than me myself. And he asks where she is and I explain to him that she’s at home hiding in the bathtub because she’s worried that thunder might come back and she doesn’t like thunder.

And he explains that he used to be scared of thunder and and then he he’d learned that thunder was just noise and it couldn’t really hurt him and he’s not scared of thunder anymore and we talk a little bit more and then he gets this this look on his face this realization and he says you know what that means I’m braver than a husky dog. And he went off feeling big and powerful. Young children love to feel big and powerful and capable in a world that they don’t often understand and in a world where they often don’t have a lot of opportunities to be powerful.

So that’s kind of a fun little story at least I thought so. Topic one, dangers, hazards, risks, and kittens. I thought we’d spend this episode digging in to risk and related topics.

So we got to deal with some definitions first. One, a danger is something that may cause harm like a kitten. They look all cute and fuzzy and furry but they’ve got those little razor blades in their fingertips and those equally dangerous razor blades in their mouth and they don’t have a lot of control over them yet and they’re still testing them out.

So kittens, although cute, are something that’s potentially dangerous, something that may cause harm. Most everything is something that may cause harm. I might give myself a paper cut with this index card later and bleed out.

It could happen. A hazard is a danger not easily seen or predicted. And again, like that kitten, those teeth and claws, especially if you’ve never met a kitten before, are hazards.

They’re dangers that are not easily seen or predicted if you aren’t aware of them. Thirdly, a risk is something you can observe, evaluate, and choose. You can observe, evaluate a kitten, for example, and decide if you want to pick it up, if you want to engage in it.

And in early learning settings, I think we often conflate these three terms, risk, hazard, and danger. And I think it really helps in keeping programs safe for kids when we break them up and clarifies those distinctions. We’ll get into more of this in a bit and this is going to be a recurring topic on the show.

One other thing about this is that mitigating those hazards is one of the big jobs of us keeping kids safe in early learning settings. So making kids aware of the teeth and claws of kittens, making sure we’re maybe wearing long-sleeve sweatshirts when we interact with a kitten for the first time in case the claws and teeth do come out, and just granting that awareness that this thing could cause you harm. It’s not the risk-taking that where children get injured in programs, it’s the lack of hazard mitigation.

And so we should really think of ourselves as hazard mitigators when we’re creating programs for early learning. Topic two, related, four types of risk. Now we often think about risk and we think about physical risk.

Climbing trees is risky. Rough and tumble play is risky. But really there are four types of risk and I want to break them down a little bit.

One, physical risk. Risk with the body. And that’s the one we generally think of when we think about taking risk as we’re climbing trees and we’re jumping off of rocks and we’re doing all those things that may cause bumps, bruises, scratches, and scrapes.

So physical risk is something we’re pretty aware of. There’s also social risk, risk with people. And all of these four are really closely intertwined because a lot of times kids will take that physical risk, risk with the body, because they’re more comfortable taking the physical risk than they are dealing with the social risk of not doing it.

So say you’re four and you’ve got five-year-old friends and they’re jumping off the picnic table and they’re leaping really far and you might be scared, apprehensive of doing that. And so you’ve got two things going on there. You’re scared of physically hurting yourself if you make the leap, but you’re also scared your slightly older buddies are going to tease you if you don’t.

And so a lot of times kids have to balance these things out when they’re taking risks. Next up is emotional risk, risk with feelings. And of course, risk with people, social risks, and risk with feelings, emotional risks are very closely intertwined because our feelings are often very closely tied to our interactions with other people.

And finally, the fourth type of risk is intellectual risk, risk with ideas. You see this a lot of times with maybe elementary school kids and even older kids and adults where we kind of sometimes fear putting ourselves out there with new ideas and sharing thoughts because we are worried about how those are going to be received by the people we’re talking with. There are a lot of third and fourth graders, for example, who don’t want to raise their hand in class because they’re worried they might have the wrong answer and then everybody’s going to look at them.

And so that’s kind of a risk with ideas. But again, closely tied, there’s a social risk there, there’s the emotional risk. And so one of the things we can do on our early learning programs is think about these four types of risk taking because when we just dwell on the physical risk taking and supporting that, we often leave some kids out.

There are often quiet kids in the classroom who maybe don’t like to, don’t feel comfortable speaking up very often and because they are really anxious about taking social risks or emotional risks or intellectual risks. And so we need to find ways to support all four types of risk taking in our early learning settings. Topic three brings us to the core value we’re going to get into in this episode and it kind of all builds up, builds on what we’ve been talking about so far.

Learning is risky and that’s why I wanted to go through those definitions of danger, hazard, and risk and give you those four types of risk before we got to this. Learning involves risk taking. Learning is an active process and because of that, there’s going to be one of those four types of risks involved in all learning.

Probably multiple types of those four types, multiples of those four types of risks in all active learning processes. Learning solidifies when understanding is demonstrated and feedback received. So that demonstration of understanding is often where a lot of that risk goes on.

The social risk and the emotional risk are probably often wrapped up in demonstrating and solidifying what we’ve learned and receiving that feedback. We worry about what other people think about us and sometimes we put off taking risks because we are anxious about how people are going to react to them and so this is something we need to support children in doing. Learning involves actively constructing knowledge by connecting new information to prior understanding and that constructing and connecting involves a lot of risk taking as well.

We’ve got to put ourselves out there emotionally and socially and intellectually and often physically for that learning to take place. Learning isn’t just a static thing you can do without some activity, without some risk taking. And now there are going to be people who will say, well, Jeff, you can just absorb facts.

Somebody can tell you a date that’s important in history or how the color purple is made and you know that information. But I would argue that absorbing random facts may expand knowledge, but it doesn’t become learning until the information is used in a meaningful way, until we do something with what we’ve been taught. So that just absorbing information isn’t really learning and the using of that information, they put it into action is where the learning is solidified and that again is going to have one of those four types of risk involved in it.

And this all comes back to mitigating hazards. Mitigating hazards promotes safety. So if we want to create an environment where it’s safe for kids to take physical risks, we need to focus on making sure there isn’t broken glass at the bottom of the slide and that there’s a resilient surface underneath the tree we let the kids climb and those kind of things.

If we want to make sure that kids are comfortable taking social and emotional risks, we need to think about how we support kids in their interactions with people and how we support them in giving or revoking consent for different types of play and those kind of things. So our job should be really be revolved around hazard mitigation to keep everybody safe, not only physically safe, but socially and emotionally safe as well. Supporting risk supports learning.

Supporting risk promotes learning. And so our job in early learning settings should be figuring out how in this playful environment do we support kids in taking those four types of risk. So wrap up for this episode.

I want you to check out the Playvolution HQ site for related handouts. I’ve got a bunch of them out there related to risks and of course they will be in the episode notes for this year episodes. Amazon Idea.

I really, since the show’s premiered, there’s been an uptick in people clicking through to the Amazon link and using that when they shop Amazon. I appreciate that. Here’s one.

Somebody bought this great set of 12 colored masking tape for kids art craft projects, that kind of stuff. Under seven bucks for 12 rolls of masking tape. That’s a pretty good deal.

Lots of bright colors in there. Lots of fun. Lots of STEM exploration and creativity that can go on with that kind of stuff.

And look, clicking through to that Amazon link. It’s in the episode notes. Help support the show in the Playvolution HQ site.

And I really, really appreciate that. Share it. Share the show.

Share the site if you like it. Share the links in the show notes if you like them. If there’s anything of value there for you.

Next week, relationships. Often, a lot of risk involved in relationships. You got to put yourself out there socially and emotionally.

So let’s kind of build on what we’ve got into in this episode. And finally, dad joke of the week. Ready for this? Here we go.

What’s blue and doesn’t weigh much? A light blue. This has been the Playvolution HQ podcast. Thanks for listening.

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