“Don't Come Too Close To My Octopus Tree”: Recording and Evaluating Young Children's Perspectives on Outdoor Learning

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments 16(2), 2006 “Don’t Come Too Close To My Octopus Tree”: Recording and Evaluating Young Children’s Perspectives on Outdoor Learning Tim Waller Department of Childhood Studies Swansea University Citation: Waller, Tim (2006). “’Don’t Come Too Close to My Octopus Tree’: Recording and Evaluating Young Children’s Perspectives of Outdoor Learning.” Children, Youth and Environments 16(2): 75-104. Comment on This Article Abstract This paper examines how children’s experiences of an outdoor project can challenge our understanding of participation. It discusses and evaluates participative approaches and the inter-relationship between children’s spaces, pedagogy and research. It draws on an ongoing multi-method study in the United Kingdom of how young children can develop their own learning paths. A critical discussion of participatory research with, rather than on, children, acknowledges children’s agency and develops the concept of “children’s spaces” in participatory research and early years’ pedagogy. The paper also discusses the implications for adult roles and methodological design and suggests a model for research as an interpretive process of co-constructed knowledge starting from children’s perspectives. Keywords:children’s perspectives, participatory research with young children, United Kingdom, outdoor environment, learning environments, participatory methods© 2006 Children, Youth and Environments “Don’t Come Too Close To My Octopus Tree”: Recording and Evaluating ... 76 Introduction This paper discusses participatory methods with young children aged three and four years. The paper explores what can be learned from researching children’s outdoor experiences to challenge thinking and practice with regards to children’s participation. The research is an ongoing collaboration between a nursery school and a university. Over a period of seven months during the school year, the children are taken regularly to a local country park. This gives them an opportunity to interact regularly with natural surroundings and to develop their own independent learning paths and dispositions. In the country park the children are given time and space to follow their own priorities, thus allowing practitioners and researchers opportunities to develop their knowledge of individual children through listening, interaction and observation. The main purpose of the research is to elicit the children’s perspectives of their outdoor experiences and to investigate the children’s dispositions within the outdoor environment. The aim of the paper is to engage in a critical discussion of participatory approaches highlighting the contested and problematic nature of research with children, with particular reference to children’s agency. The paper provides an overview of research with young children, focusing on methods and issues of participation. As this research was getting under way, it became clear that a conceptual shift was taking place, involving both research and practice, towards participation with children and recognition that children are “experts in their own lives” (Clark and Statham 2005). An analysis of this conceptual shift is offered, drawing on insights from recent literature in the field. The paper then moves on to analyze a possible model for participatory research that focuses on young children’s perspectives and explores the concept of children’s spaces advocated by Moss and Petrie (2002) in relation to both participatory research and early years pedagogy. Children’s Perspectives The increasing international interest in participatory methods of research and in developing appropriate methods for “listening to children” has been well documented, both in this journal (e.g., Burke 2005 and Fjørtoft 2004) and elsewhere (e.g., O’Kane 2000 and Kirby et al. 2003). Hill (2005) points out that the public prominence given to children’s rights has challenged conventional thinking about children’s competence to participate and has led, over the last few years, to a significant trend in policy, research and literature concerning children’s perspectives. Due to the influence of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and in the UK, the Children Acts of 1989 and 2004, both policymakers and service providers have recognized the importance of listening to children (Lancaster 2003; Lloyd-Smith and Tarr 2000). Additionally, Kirby et al. (2003) argue that the participation of children and young people in evaluation and research has generally increased in its scope and quality. As a result, in the UK, for example...