Outdoor Play and Learning in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Play in early childhood education is foundational, and outdoor play in particular offers unique learning and development opportunities. Outdoor play in early childhood education has significant historical legacies that have been somewhat eroded in the 20th century with the advent of manufactured play equipment, indoor screen-based technologies, and “top down” curriculum priorities. More recently, a reinvigoration of outdoor play has been inspired by the widely perceived Western need to connect children with nature: perhaps, nature as the “cure all” for the 21st-century lifestyles of many children. Outdoor play also aligns with the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child to play, to experience nature, and, in the longer term, to mitigate global sustainability concerns. In early childhood education, indoor and outdoor play spaces must be considered as equally valid learning environments. Outdoor play may occur in center-based play spaces or beyond in local natural environments such as forests or beaches. Yet, too often, outdoor environments are limited or lacking in increasingly urbanized cities. Outdoor play and learning in early childhood education is a multifaceted topic spanning children’s well-being and physical skills, risk management, and play-space design to immersion in natural outdoor settings and teachers’ outdoor pedagogies and dispositions. As a consequence the literature is diverse, but also now expanding as advocacy for children’s outdoor play in natural settings gains momentum. This article outlines research on outdoor play and learning in early childhood education across six key themes. The first theme is Outdoor Pedagogy, and here the focus lies on the history, rationale, and knowledge about outdoor play, as well as the pedagogical role of the teacher. The second theme, Children’s Development and Learning through Outdoor Play, presents studies that reinforce the fundamental importance of outdoor play for children’s development and learning across varied domains. In the third theme, Play-Space Design, the historical beginnings of design are mapped to current design priorities around participatory approaches and natural elements. The fourth theme, Forest Preschool and Nature Connections, captures the rapid international emergence of these varied outdoor programs, the multiple benefits they offer children, and the emergent research. The fifth theme, Risky Play, presents scientific evidence about play, incorporating the risk of physical injury and the benefits of risk as children manage their risky encounters. The final theme, Outdoor Play and Sustainability, outlines possible shifts from anthropocentric being in nature as a play resource only, to a more ethically informed way of being with nature that challenges dominant global paradigms. Over the last century, the field has moved from a dominant romantic ideal of good nature and normative understandings of the child-in-nature to recognizing and examining understandings of power, gender, and dominant Western early childhood pedagogies and ideologies—as well as the anthropocentric relationships of human-nature and the interconnections between the human and nonhuman.