Draft Question:
My research has focused on a broad subject of interactivity and learning styles of children. I’m looking at narrowing this down to the discourse of culture in regards to parenting versus child growth and development. Specifically taking examples of the increasing amount of “safety” involved in learning and play and how this affects a child’s personal expansion as well as development of necessary life skills such as risk assessment and common sense. The mentality of standard playgrounds and “safe equipment” is assigned to the controlling and protective parent as a ballpark stereotype. The adventure park genre is leaning more towards what I call “hands off parenting.” The process of letting your child fail or succeed based entirely on the consequences of interacting with the environment. This point of view is destined to change, however I need a starting point and this is it. The underlying premise of my question is to examine how creating a safer environment versus a more interactive one (moving parts and such) affects the end result of what playgrounds are designed to be: areas where children have fun.
Interesting question. In my opinion, research questions tend to change in some way as you go anyway, and you already narrowed it down. I took the main idea to be "How does having a hands-off, interactive environment affect a child's interest and fun when compared to safer, controlled environments?" This might be a somewhat difficult question to research, but working at the Discovery Center should help. And like I said, as you go you'll probably evolve your question somewhat, and these are just drafts right now, I believe, so no worries.
ReplyDeleteThis is a fun question. I agree with Taylor, that perhaps you might eventually need to narrow down a bit. But for now, I appreciate how you're looking at "safe" vs "interactive" learning environments and linking it to a restrictive parenting culture. This really has the potential to be extremely interesting. Keep up the good work.
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