Differing opportunities for outdoor teaching and learning for educators and young children exist globally as urbanised countries do not have accessibility to extensive natural spaces and resources. A rich resource which urbanised landscapes might consider are the community facilities and settings which Chaudhury et al. (2015) described as public open spaces including parks, green spaces, sidewalks, plazas, playgrounds, shopping malls and community centres. These spaces are easily accessible to the public and allow for varied uses for individuals and groups, which can foster the engagement of public in the neighbourhood community environment and in turn support social connectedness within the community members (Lachowycz & Jones, 2013). These learning opportunities and connections in the outdoors could be influenced by aspects related to beliefs, practices and barriers (e.g., Ernst, 2014), as well as educators’ own outdoor experiences (e.g., Bilton, 2020). With a focus on exploring urbanized landscapes, this qualitative study reports findings based on pedagogical conversations from six early educators of children in six Kindergarten (five- to six-year-olds) classrooms across four preschools in Singapore. Preliminary analyses reveal that educators perceived lack of contextualized information and parents’ expectations amongst some of the barriers faced when designing outdoor community learning. Content analysis is being conducted to illustrate educators’ extension of outdoor experiences into indoor classrooms, as well as incorporation of technology in the design of outdoor community learning experiences. The findings contribute to the understanding of designing outdoor community learning in urbanized places.

Authors:
Siew Chin Ng, University of Melbourne, Australia

About the Presenter(s)
Siew Chin Ng is currently a PhD candidate and tutor at The University of Melbourne, Australia. Her teaching and research interests include early childhood pedagogy and curriculum, adult-child interaction and teacher professional learning.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/siew-chin-ng/

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Siew-Chin-Ng

Additional website of interest
https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=Ly_3psUAAAAJ&hl=en

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