Schoolyards are one of the most overlooked determinants of students’ daily experience at school.
Schoolyards for Thought is led by Dr. Lauren McNamara, an educational psychologist, prevention scientist, and Ashoka Fellow whose work focuses on how schoolyards function as everyday social environments—shaping belonging, engagement, and mental health through the conditions students encounter each day.
While many efforts focus on physical design, this approach examines how design, supervision, policies, and routines interact to shape students’ experiences over time. In this way, schoolyards are understood not simply as spaces, but as environments where development unfolds—where small, everyday experiences accumulate to shape how students connect, participate, and engage in school life.
This perspective builds on research showing that what happens in schoolyards is not separate from learning. Experiences of inclusion, exclusion, uncertainty, and connection carry into classrooms and shape students’ broader relationship with school.
Yet historically, schoolyards—and recess in particular—have remained peripheral to core educational priorities. As a result, even well-intentioned investments often fail to deliver their full potential.
Schoolyards for Thought works to change this—advancing a systems-level approach that aligns physical design with social and organizational conditions to improve how schoolyards function in practice.
Dr. McNamara's research has been published in peer reviewed journals including Journal of School Health, Health Promotion International, International Journal of Play, Children and Schools, among others. Her work includes leading Canada’s National Position Statement on Recess and contributing to international efforts to advance the role of schoolyards and recess in child development and well-being, including through the Global Recess Alliance.
