Active outdoor play is an essential part of children’s development, helping them build physical, cognitive and social skills from their earliest years. However, its role in education is often overlooked. The Education 2030 Framework for Action does not reference play as an essential element of SDG 4. It recognizes that young children ‘engage in intensive […] The post Active play outdoors is missing from early childhood education appeared first on World Education Blog.
Active outdoor play is an essential part of children’s development, helping them build physical, cognitive and social skills from their earliest years. However, its role in education is often overlooked.
The Education 2030 Framework for Action does not reference play as an essential element of SDG 4. It recognizes that young children ‘engage in intensive meaning-making of the self and surrounding world’ but makes no reference either to their interaction with the natural world. Yet active play outdoors is an essential element of early childhood education. A global study of unstructured play and time outdoors showed that children and adolescents did not reach high levels of physical activity in any country. The lack of such activity may be a bigger concern in richer and urban contexts, but the rapid advent of technology and lengthy screen time is turning it into a global policy concern.
Nature-based education supports learning, development and inclusion
Nature-based education amplifies both the benefits and the risks of outdoor play. It can provide opportunities for honing scientific skills, including observation, classification and prediction, as well as broader competencies such as problem-solving, critical thinking, leadership, teamwork and communication. Even coding can be introduced in this setting without reference to or handling of electronic devices. Reviews of the evidence have similarly concluded that nature experiences show promise for increasing content knowledge and understanding of scientific methodologies.
Forest kindergartens, for instance, are daily outdoor educational programmes with limited or no indoor facilities. Children spend most of their time outside and the curriculum is based on their outdoor activities.
Between 2013 and 2017, Copenhagen University conducted the TEACHOUT study that compared traditional and outdoor schools. It concluded that lessons in the forest improved children’s ability to cope with unpredictability in everyday life because they developed a more flexible mindset necessary to manage the different risks they might encounter. This had positive knock-on effects on their learning motivation and reading abilities. Children with behavioural challenges benefited from the environment as well.
Outside of education improvements, indirect, but connected benefits are also seen. A recent study from Finland, where schools were brought into forests, showed the benefits of nature-based education for health outcomes, for example. One forest kindergarten programme lead in Japan also explained: “By having them engage in carefree activities in nature, their independence develops”.
Some studies suggest that the calmness of outdoor activity is particularly beneficial for disadvantaged children. Recognizing unconventional forms of early childhood education may also reduce barriers to participation for some communities.
In New Zealand, the bicultural Te Whāriki curriculum has long required teachers to incorporate Māori ways of appreciating and connecting with the natural environment into their teaching. Alternative home-grown initiatives reflecting Māori thinking have also achieved considerable scale. More broadly, educators have recommended recognizing traditional teaching of plant lore and outdoor survival skills, such as those practised by the San in Namibia, as a form of early childhood education.
There are opportunities and challenges in different contexts
The role that nature-based early childhood education might play in low- and middle-income countries is ambiguous. By making use of what is found in the environment, it can cost less than modern preschools with rent and equipment costs. However, it requires an outdoor space that is both accessible and reasonably safe, which is a luxury in many contexts.
Risks may come from exposure to inclement weather, wild animals or toxic plants. However, studies comparing injuries in forest and conventional kindergartens have generally found that injury rates are not appreciably higher in outdoor settings, even if some injury types are specific to them.
At the same time, nature-based early childhood education is often an elite experience for already privileged families. In some countries, children from minority groups, children with special needs and children from households where the dominant language is not spoken are underrepresented in such programmes.
There is a growing movement worldwide for nature-based early childhood education programmes
No authoritative data exist on nature-based early childhood education programmes because they remain a niche service. However, studies from selected high-income countries suggest that their numbers are increasing. In Norway, when we researched this issue, we found 356 nature kindergartens, making up some 6% of the 5,788 kindergartens in the country. There were more than 500 in Denmark, where the wave of nature kindergartens originated in the late 20th century. There were 120 such organizations in Czechia by 2014, about 2,000 in Germany, up from ‘over 300’ reported in 2004, and 180 in Sweden. The North American Association for Environmental Education estimated at least 800 nature-based preschools in the United States in 2023, up from fewer than 25 in 2010. And, in Japan, there were reportedly more than 100 forest kindergartens as of 2014.
Outside of separate nature-based programmes, some countries are building more outside learning into all early childhood centres. In 2018, Scotland’s Children’s Minister released a statement calling for children to spend as much time outside as inside, so that playing and learning outside becomes ‘a fundamental part of growing up’.
Regulation has struggled to keep pace
Regulatory frameworks do not fit easily with this growing trend, however. Some countries have adopted specific regulations to define and recognize forest kindergartens, while others have adjusted oversight arrangements to support outdoor play.
Mainstream regulations generally presume an indoor facility, including requirements relating to floor space, buildings and sanitation. By definition, forest kindergartens, especially in their purest form, cannot always meet such requirements. In Australia, nature-based early childhood education is limited to four hours per day because the regulatory requirements for full-time centres cannot be met. An alternative solution has been to run programmes part-time and under other frameworks than early childhood education. In the Republic of Korea, many centres are operated by the Korea Forest Service for instance, rather than education authorities, as ‘infant forest experience centres’, thereby avoiding regulatory constraints on licensed kindergartens.
As interest in outdoor learning continues to grow, education systems may have to adapt. Regulations may need a re-think so that they both protect children but also allow for innovative approaches that have an increasing bank of research to show that they are good for mind, body and soul.
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