Outdoor Learning and Play: Pedagogical Practices and Children's Cultural Formation

This book explores children's participation in dialectical reciprocity with place-based institutional practices, highlighting how outdoors and nature form unique conditions for play, learning, and cultural formation. It also reveals inequalities in societies and communities that limit access to outdoor spaces and nature. The findings suggest that institutional practices are shaped by pedagogical content, teachers' training, regulations, and societal perceptions of nature, children, and sustainable education. The book provides empirical and theoretical support for enhancing, increasing, and sustaining outdoor and nature education in response to crises such as climate change and the recent pandemic.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 201 pages
Publication date: 21 July 2021
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

This Open Access book delves into the captivating realm of children's engagement in dialectical reciprocity with place-based institutional practices, drawing upon empirical research from diverse countries such as Australia, Brazil, China, Poland, Norway, and Wales. Anchored in cultural-historical theory, the analysis unveils how the outdoors and nature create exceptional conditions for children's play, formal and informal learning, and cultural formation. Furthermore, it sheds light on the existence of inequalities in societies and communities, often hindering and restricting families' and children's access to and participation in outdoor spaces and nature. The findings emphasize how institutional practices are molded by pedagogical content, teachers' training, institutional regulations, and societal perceptions of nature, children, and suitable, sustainable education for young children. In the face of crises like climate change and the recent pandemic, a specific focus on the outdoors and nature in cultural formation becomes increasingly timely within the cultural-historical theoretical tradition. By offering empirical and theoretical insights, this book serves as a valuable resource for policy makers, researchers, educators, and families, empowering them to enhance, increase, and sustain outdoor and nature education for the benefit of all.

Weight: 382g
Dimension: 155 x 234 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030725976
Edition number: 1st ed. 2021