Understanding Children’s Movement Development in Naturalised Outdoor Learning Spaces: An Early Childhood Educator and Researcher Learning Journey

Abstract

<p>This doctoral research portfolio comes at a time of heightened interest in young children’s healthy development, wellbeing, active play, and learning in outdoor environments. This research is timely as global trends in post-industrial countries indicate rising epidemiological risks associated with sedentary behaviour and wellfounded concerns with reductions in children’s outdoor time and contact with the natural world. Akin to this global context, Australia’s early childhood education and care regulatory frameworks articulate explicit obligations for early childhood educators to provide physical activity and learning experiences in both built and naturalised outdoor environments. Moreover, studies highlight early childhood educators are potentially influential in either encouraging or constraining children’s physically active outdoor play and connections with the natural world.</p> <p>This multifocused qualitative research study investigated in rich detail the phenomena of young children’s movement development and physically active play in naturalised outdoor play environments within three early childhood settings. The study included investigation of early childhood educator and doctoral researcher understandings and perceptions of children’s movement and physically active play experiences in naturalised outdoor early childhood settings. In addition, the inquiry extended to how early childhood educators, researchers, landscape designers, and children perceive specific features and elements of naturalised outdoor playspaces and why this might matter.</p> <p>A major concentration of this study was the journey taken by a group of six early childhood educators and the doctoral researcher through professional learning. The professional learning program focused upon the pedagogy of physical activity and active play in naturalised outdoor environments. More specifically, the goal of this part of the study was to investigate the flow-on effects and value of the professional learning for both doctoral researcher and early childhood educators in terms of changes in pedagogical practice and perceptions of children’s movement development within naturalised outdoor playspaces.</p> <p>Positioned within an interpretive–constructivist paradigm, this study engaged with a novel multimethodological framework to achieve integrative analyses of multiple data sources. The analysis of findings addressed the complex interplay of naturalised outdoor environment characteristics with young children’s movement development, physically active play, and the pedagogies within this domain of early childhood educator and professional learning practice. The findings extend pedagogical thinking about children’s active play outdoors beyond traditional understandings of physical activity, motor skills development, and outdoor playspaces as discrete, separate phenomena. Post professional learning of the early childhood educators adopted more encompassing and integrative perspectives of children’s movement development and physically active play in the outdoors. The analysis of these findings highlights the importance of contextually sensitive, situated pedagogies for the outdoors rather than formulaic approaches.</p> <p>Appraisal of the professional learning activities within this study offer further directions for professional learning in outdoor physically active play pedagogy. Findings from this study also suggest that affordance awareness of outdoor environments, immersive outdoor experience coupled with professional learning emphasising kinaesthetic and multisensory awareness, may invigorate thinking about how outdoor playspaces can offer rich movement and active play experiences for young children.</p>