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With a growing number of primary schools around the globe greening their schoolyards, opportunities arise to realize outdoor learning in natural areas on the school's premises. Despite their promising potential, green schoolyards as outdoor learning environments remain mostly unintegrated in teachers' educational practices. In the current study, teachers of five primary schools in Netherlands were followed for two consecutive years during a participatory action research project. Based on their experiences in this project, teachers identified barriers when integrating the green schoolyard as a learning environment and found practice-based solutions to overcome these barriers. Across schools, a total of 20 meetings were organized, with 75 teachers participating in the project. Results revealed four broad themes encompassing barriers and solutions. Teachers feel hindered by outdoor learning having no formal status in their current educational practice, experience barriers related to a lack of confidence in their own outdoor teaching expertise, find it difficult to get started, and experience barriers related to physical constraints. Teachers, professionals, and researchers together found solutions to overcome each specific barrier. These solutions can be translated to general recommendations: just do it, get educated and inspired, engage in real-life experiences, get an outdoor pedagogical mindset, and follow a tailored process. The findings can be used by primary schools and other institutions to develop interventions that support teachers to further integrate the green schoolyard as a learning environment.
Play in nature-based environments in childhood education has positive benefits for child development. Although previous reviews showed the benefits of play in nature-based environments for child development they did not attempt to understand how and why nature-based environments contribute to play quality. This review aims to explore the value of play in nature-based environments compared to non-nature-based environments for developmental outcomes of young children (2–8 year). We searched for studies that investigated the relation between play and nature-based environments on the databases PsycINFO, ERIC, and Web of Science. Inclusion/exclusion criteria were: (1) the study focused on play in/on a nature based environment, (2) the study included participants between the age of 2–8 years, (3) it was an empirical study, (4) the study was conducted in the context of early childhood education (ECE), and (5) the study included participants without special needs or disabilities. Using these criteria we selected 28 qualitative studies with an overall sample size of N = 998 children aged 2–8 years. The studies were synthesized using an adaptation of Noblit and Hare’s meta-ethnographic approach. Three overarching themes were found: (1) the aspects of play quality that are related to nature-based environments, (2) the aspects of nature-based environments that support play, and (3) the aspects of teacher-child interactions that contribute to nature play quality. The meta themes resonate with play theories and theories of the restorative value of nature. We draw on the qualitative data to refine and extend these theories, and to come up with a definition of the concept “nature play.” This systematic review also sets a base for future research on play interventions in nature-based environments. We argue that (1) research will benefit from thoroughly conceptualizing the role of play in the development of young children, (2) using the affordances theory research will benefit from moving beyond the individual play actions as a unit of analysis, and (3) from an educational perspective it is important to shift the focus of nature play to its benefits for children’s cognitive development.
Finding fulfillment of basic psychological needs may be difficult for parents living in shelters after becoming homeless or after escaping violence. This study tested if experiencing nature was associated with the basic psychological needs of parents in shelters. Need satisfaction and need frustration were measured among parents in shelters (N = 160), with one measurement in the standard indoor context of the shelter and one measurement while experiencing nature. Experiencing nature was associated with enhanced need satisfaction (d = 0.28) and reduced need frustration (d = −0.24). The effect was especially pronounced for parents with young children. Our findings suggest that the physical environment matters for parents’ basic psychological need fulfillment as they interact with their children in the context of sheltering. This finding opens a potential avenue for supporting parental functioning and resilience in the face of risk if these effects were to be replicated across settings using controlled experimental designs. At the very least, the findings may be discussed with practitioners and parents in the context of making shelter life and work more conducive to mental health and family functioning.
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