‘It is riskier’: preschoolers’ reasoning of risky situations

Abstract

Risk is a fundamental component of well-being and is interconnected with all aspects of child development. The aim of this paper is to explore children’s (N = 50) own perspectives and perceptions of risky situations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and images were used as prompts. Children aged five to six years were asked to identify and discuss five risky activities based on Sandseter’s categorization of risky outdoor play. Responses indicated as risk causes were situational aspects of the contexts, the age of the actor and natural hazards. The presence/absence of others seemed to have an impact on identifying risky vs riskier conditions, and physical harm was recorded as a negative outcome. Such findings reveal that causal strength, probabilistic inference, future reasoning, and linguistic capacity are connected with children’s reasoning of risk; in this direction, pedagogical activities on risk could be implemented from the ‘safe’ early childhood classroom.