When thinking about play, education, and child development, our dear friend Adam Bienenstock’s concept of Spontaneous Social Collaboration (SSC) offers a compelling lens for understanding how children organically engage with one another in play.
Adam describes SSC as the phenomenon where children, without adult direction, come together to share ideas, create games, work on challenges and solve problems.
This video shows that children do not require a pre-existing relationship to play together, and that playful interactions occur naturally when children spend time together in sensory-rich environments. Adam’s language is provocative, describing adult intervention in play as coercive. This raises an important issue about adults’ tendency to control individual and group dynamics, despite children’s natural inclination to form connections independently.
Play: Freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated
This concept of SSC aligns closely with the playwork profession’s definition of play as “a process that is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated” (Playwork Principles Scrutiny Group, 2005). From this perspective, play emerges when children engage in behaviour on their own terms and for their own reasons.
These same attributes underpin SSC. When children are left to construct their own play opportunities and determine the rules of engagement, social collaboration flourishes. At Educated by Nature, we see this regularly across our programs. In our KIN Villiage sessions, children instinctively band together to build shelters, dig rivers in the sand, or create elaborate role-playing games in the bush. Similarly, at our Self Build Play Space, access to tools, timber, and open-ended materials inspires collaborative projects such as bridge-building and fort construction. By providing an environment and resources that support child led play, we create the conditions for collaboration to emerge organically, entirely on the children’s terms.
The Core of Spontaneous Social Collaboration
Unlike structured teamwork that is often imposed by adults, this form of collaboration emerges organically.
Key characteristics include:
Self-organisation: Children naturally take on different roles as needed, shifting leadership fluidly. For example, when building a cubby, one child might gather materials while another suggests where to place them, and later they might swap roles without being prompted.
Intrinsic motivation: The drive to work together stems from their own interests, rather than external rewards or expectations. For example, during our Hut Building and Loose Parts programs, children naturally gravitate towards certain peers forming groups and collaborating without needing to be assigned tasks or placed in predetermined teams.
Negotiation and conflict resolution: With minimal adult intervention, children develop social-emotional skills by managing disagreements, adapting to group dynamics, and making shared decisions. An example we see is children debating the rules of a game and eventually agreeing on a version that works for everyone.
Deep engagement: Through self-directed behaviour, children become fully immersed in activity, leading to richer learning and stronger emotional connections. For example, a group constructing a complex obstacle course might work together for hours experimenting, adjusting, and solving problems as they go.
Collaborative risk management
When children are afforded free choice and personal direction, risk and challenge are ever present. Fortunately, this provides many benefits such as physical activity, the promotion of wellbeing and resilience and the refinement of risk management skills (Obee, et al., 2021). Crucially, children can assess and manage risks themselves. They often make collective decisions about appropriate levels of risk and ways to mitigate them.
Kleppe et al. (2024) offer a theoretical approach to understanding the processes that children navigate when encountering risk in play:
Risk willingness (emotional): An intuitive emotional response (positive or negative) toward risk, which may influence a child’s propensity to take risks before or during play.
Risk assessment (cognitive): The use of sensory information to orient, identify, and predict environmental factors before and during play opportunities.
Risk handling (physical): The physical execution of actions and motor behaviours involved in engaging with risk.
In a collaborative sense, engaging in risk and challenge provides opportunities for:
Shared goals – play often involves building, balancing, climbing, moving at speed. Such activities necessitate communication, cooperation and trust. Children often take steps to manage their own risks both individually, but also as a group. For example, children at our programs often work together building rafts, often coaching and encouraging one another.
Building resilience – when a project or plan fails, children adapt, problem solve and try again. There is a high degree of negotiation and diplomacy exercised in these situations. At our programs, children have to figure out the best way to tie knots, stack materials, or create counterbalances in their play structures.
A sense of autonomy – The more ownership children feel over their risk-taking, the more engaged they are in the process of collaboration. Having the permission to calculate risk together, enhances children’s ability to collaborate effectively.
The Essential Role of the Adult: Getting Out of the Way
One of the most critical aspects of enabling SSC is understanding when and how adults should intervene. Adam, argues that over-managed environments stifle collaboration. When adults direct play too rigidly or involve themselves at the first sign of conflict, they remove the very conditions necessary for authentic social learning.
Instead, the adult’s role should be to:
1. Observe rather than direct – Watching how children naturally form groups and solve problems without stepping in.
2. Provide an enabling environment – Offering loose parts, natural materials, and spaces that invite interaction without dictating their use.
3. Intervene only when necessary – Promoting safety while still allowing children to navigate challenges independently.
In Educated by Nature programs, facilitators ‘hold space’ for play, affording a reasonable amount of risk that allows children to experiment, collaborate, and have choice and control over their play experiences.
Natural Environments as Catalysts for Collaboration
A final, crucial piece of this puzzle is the environment itself. Natural settings and even natural loose parts support SSC by offering varied and flexible materials such as logs, branches, mud, and rocks that invite cooperative problem solving. Nature stimulates the senses in rich and varied ways; through the feel of different textures underfoot, the sounds of birds and wind, and the scent of damp earth, all of which deepen engagement and encourage exploration. Additionally, nature’s dynamic elements including changing weather, terrain, and wildlife create a sense of wonder and unpredictability that sparks curiosity and interaction.
Conclusion
Spontaneous Social Collaboration is a powerful reminder that children’s most profound learning happens when adults get out of the way and allow play to unfold organically. Through Educated by Nature’s programs, we see firsthand how risk, challenge, and natural environments serve as catalysts for authentic collaboration, resilience, and deep social learning. By embracing the principles of intrinsically motivated play, providing a reasonable amount of challenge, and stepping back as adults, we create the conditions for children to build relationships, solve problems, and thrive together on their own terms.
References
Kleppe, R., Sandseter, E. B. H., Sando, O. J., & Brussoni, M. (2024). Children’s dynamic risk management–a comprehensive approach to children’s risk willingness, risk assessment, and risk handling. International Journal of Play, 1-15.
Obee, P., Sandseter, E. B. H., & Harper, N. J. (2021). Children’s use of environmental features affording risky play in early childhood education and care. Early Child Development and Care, 191(16), 2607–2625. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2020.1726904
Playwork Principles Scrutiny Group. (2005). The Playwork Principles. Principles Scrutiny Group, Cardiff 2005.