Jane Waters

Learning in the outdoor environment: a missed opportunity?

In 2001, the Welsh Assembly Government announced proposals for a Foundation Phase for children aged three to seven years. The Foundation Phase framework promotes a play‐based approach to childrens learning in both indoor and outdoor contexts and places childrens well‐being and their personal and social development at its core. While the framework is currently being piloted across Wales, full implementation will not take place until 2010; for many schools, then, this is a time of transition. This paper discusses the findings of a research project that aimed to document the current use of the outdoors by a group of early years teachers working in South Wales. Drawing on data from interviews and observations conducted in four schools, it is suggested that the teachers missed many of the opportunities afforded by the outdoor environment to enhance childrens learning. The paper considers the reasons why this might be the case and comments on the distinction, apparent in two schools, between what was seen as ‘normal’ and ‘special’ outdoor activity.

Supporting the development of risk-taking behaviours in the early years: an exploratory study

Childrens opportunities for independent play in natural outdoor spaces, and the associated opportunities to take and negotiate risk, are being eroded despite potential links between such play and the development of positive learning dispositions. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that documented the risk-taking behaviours displayed by four-year-old children in the natural environment of a Forest School and within their school outdoor play-space. The data indicated that the Forest School environment was better able to support the development of positive risk-taking behaviours. The environmental features that may have contributed to the observed behaviours are considered.

Moving outdoors: further explorations of ‘child-initiated’ learning in the outdoor environment

This article reports on a study in which eight Foundation Phase teachers were supported in exploring Reggio-inspired projects in the outdoor environments of their settings. The study found that the teachers did adopt more child-initiated/centred approaches although it is maintained that in part this was related to the outdoor context in which the explorations took place. However, supporting such approaches was not easy for the teachers while many did not make regular use of their outdoor spaces. It appeared that ‘real work’ was seen to take place within classrooms and was focused on the learning of subject content.

Child-initiated learning, the outdoor environment and the ‘underachieving’ child

The Foundation Phase for Wales advocates an experiential, play-based approach to learning for children aged three to seven years that includes child-initiated activity within the outdoor environment. In previous research, Foundation Phase practitioners maintained that children perceived to be ‘underachieving’ within the classroom came into their own when engaged in child-initiated learning outdoors. This study, which involved eight Foundation Phase teachers, aimed to explore these perceived differences as well as teachers’ perceptions of ‘underachievement’. It is concluded that the more natural outdoor spaces in which child-initiated activity took place appeared to amplify the effects of child-initiated learning and diminish the perception of underachievement; that engagement in this project enabled some teachers to see ‘underachievement’ as being distributed across people, place and activity; and that through constructing the outdoor ‘space’ as a ‘place’ embedded with positive meanings, children may have had the opportunity to reconstruct themselves as strong, competent children rather than as ‘underachieving’ pupils.

The new curriculum in Wales: a new view of the child?

This article aims to set out considerations resulting from international collaboration between educational thinkers in Norway and Wales concerning the proposed Foundation Phase in Wales and the Norwegian Framework Plan for Day Care Institutions, which cater for the same age of child. The essential feature of the Welsh proposal is the aim to place ‘well-being’ at the heart of educational work with children between the ages of three and seven. There needs to be an explicit consideration of the view of the child within policy and practice in order for the Foundation Phase to be successfully implemented. Welsh policy-makers and practitioners need to openly adopt a sociocultural view of the child in order to place well-being at the centre of the Foundation Phase at the level of the classroom, particularly at Key Stage 1. Well-being is considered in the light of Norwegian approaches. Practice in Norway and the findings from the recent EPPE project in Britain are used as a source of guidance for Welsh practitioners.

The professional development of early years educators – achieving systematic, sustainable and transformative change

Within this special issue on professional learning and development (PLD) in the early years sector, we aim to do three things: to highlight the state of play in PLD in early years internationally; to challenge all involved to consider carefully how scarce resources are used, review the PLD on offer and demand what is most effective; and to move the field forward with regard to developing and evaluating effective PLD. This editorial begins by addressing the question of what is distinctive about PLD in the early years and the contexts within which it takes place. We then outline what is current in early years PLD and discuss the themes addressed in the papers presented. While authors of the chapters have adopted local terminology to describe those who work in the early years sector, we have taken the term ‘early years educator’ to include all those adults who are charged, as part of their professional role, with the care and education of young children. The age range spanned by the term ‘early years’ varies between countries from birth to five, from birth to six or seven, or from three to six or seven, depending on specific curricula, nature of provision and funding arrangements. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that whatever the policy determinants, ‘early years’ encompasses education and care of children from birth to seven years, wherever that may be located. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has come somewhat later than other sectors of education to what Ball (2013) refers to as a global project to ensure economic productivity and competitiveness. Increasingly, early years has been brought into this discernible ‘global policy’ discourse that sets out to plan for a particular vision of productive and competitive nations. With it have come distinct ideas about the purpose of early years education and care and the form it should take, not least that it should provide childcare for an increase in the (female) workforce in the short term, ensure a cost-effective means of ensuring a productive and competitive workforce in the long term and reduce inequality by improving outcomes for children from disadvantaged circumstances (UNESCO 2000, 2006, Barnett and Masse 2007, Field 2010, Allen 2011, Barnett and Nores 2012, Heckman and Kautz 2012). Since one of the key factors considered to contribute to the quality of early years education is the quality of its workforce, including levels of qualification and training (SirajBlatchford et al. 2006, Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority 2012), there are clear implications of this global project for the initial training and PLD of early years educators to enable them to deliver the desirable results, most often measured by children’s learning and developmental outcomes. The question is therefore raised about the distinctive nature of the context for professional learning and development in ECEC. The following examples give a flavour of this distinctiveness. Historically, England’s ECEC sector, as in many countries, has been staffed primarily by educators who were vocationally qualified, as well as by unqualified educators. While England’s current statutory framework, revised in

Revealing the interactional features of learning and teaching moments in outdoor activity

ABSTRACT The data considered in this article was generated as part of a doctoral research study entitled: A sociocultural consideration of child-initiated interaction with teachers in indoor and outdoor spaces (Waters 2011) where child-initiated, teacher–child interaction in indoor and outdoor spaces were investigated. The purpose of the secondary analysis was twofold; firstly to explore, more deeply, the establishment of intersubjectivity between teacher and child in educative interaction, particularly in episodes that support and extend thinking. Secondly, the secondary analysis was to consider the role of the environment in such episodes. Through investigating the selected interactions using conversation analysis, it is revealed that children talk their environment into being (Heritage 1978) through the initiation of an interaction using a wh type question. Also, the childs initiation of an interaction regarding the environment sequentially offers the teacher an opportunity to engage in a sustained, affiliated interaction with the child via the mobilized topic.

The Foundation Phase in Wales – time to grow up?

This article provides an overview of the life of the Foundation Phase in Wales to date. It considers where we have been, where we are now and where we might go, in relation to early years education provision since devolution. With reinforced governmental backing for the future of the Foundation Phase, the article considers what lessons can be taken forward to scaffold the effective longevity of an initiative that, in general terms, enjoys warm support locally and the envious attention of external observers. The article spends some time establishing ‘where we have been’, in order to fully set the context of ‘where we are’ and ‘where we might go’.