It has been a long time since my last update on this page. Busy times…

Anyway. I would like to present two PhD students. They both have very interesting projects and I am trying to be a supervisor for them.

The first one is Kathrine Bjørgen who is soon (January 27th) orally defending her PhD project. In Norway you have to go through a trial lecture and an oral defense of your project to get your PhD degree approved. Kathrine has carried out an interesting project exploring factors promoting the motivation and enjoyment of being physical active (physical active play) among 3-5 year old children in preschool. She has been investigating children’s level of involvement, well-being and physical activity in different play environments and in relational situations with the practitioners in the preschool. Her thesis consists of an overview of the project with its theoretical frame, methods, results and an overall discussion, along with three scientific articles. The articles are:

Bjørgen, K. & Svendsen, B. (2015). Kindergarten practitioner’ experience of promoting children`s involvement in and enjoyment of in physically active play. Does the contagion of physical energy affect physically active play? Contemporary Issues for Early Childhood, 16(3). http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1463949115600025

Bjørgen, K. (2015). Children`s Well-Being and Involvement in Physically Active Outdoors Play in a Norwegian Kindergarten. Playful sharing of physical experiences. Child Care in practice, published online in September 2015: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13575279.2015.1051512

Bjørgen, K. (2016). Physical activity in light of affordances in outdoor environments: qualitative observation studies of 3–5 years olds in kindergarten. SpringerPlus, 5:950, published online in June 2016: https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40064-016-2565-y

The other PhD student I would like to present is Rasmus Kleppe, who is in his final stage of the PhD work. He is working on a project exploring 1-3 year old children’s risky play. He has explored the six categories of risky play among children in this age group, and found characteristics of their risky play as well as developing two more categories which is particularly relevant for the youngest children: play with impact and vicarious risk. You can read more about his reasearch in his two articles:

Kleppe, R., Melhuish, E., & Sandseter, E. B. H. (in press). Identifying and characterizing risky play in the age one-to-three years. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal (to be published in issue 3, 2017)

Kleppe, R. (2017). Characteristics of staff–child interaction in 1–3-year-olds’ risky play in early childhood education and care, Early Child Development and Care, published online in January 2017: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03004430.2016.1273909

His third article is soon to be submitted to a journal.

Good luck to both Kathrine and Rasmus!

Ellen Beate