Kos, Marjanca;
Tunnicliffe, Sue Dale;
Praprotnik, Luke;
Torkar, Gregor;
(2024)
Learning Biology in the Early Years Through Nature Play in the Forest: An Exploratory Study from Slovenia.
In: Korfiatis, Kostas and Grace, Marcus and Hammann, Marcus, (eds.)
Shaping the Future of Biological Education Research.
Springer: Cham, Switzerland.
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Abstract
Nature play is defined as freely chosen, unstructured interactions with and in nature. The aim of this study was to find out how nature play provides preschool children with play episodes where they experienced biological phenomena and living organisms. 21 four-to-six-year-old children from a preschool in Slovenia participated in the study. They were told to play in the forest. Their play was observed over four consecutive days, with each session lasting 1 h and a half. Three randomly selected children were equipped each time with small video cameras attached to their heads to automatically record sound and images from their perspective. The recordings were transcribed and edited, independently reviewed and analysed. 12 recordings were analysed, a total of 1167 min. 14.9% of the time was identified as play episodes in which the children experienced biological phenomena. The children paid more attention to animals than plants and fungi. Experiences with observed animals were more emotionally engaging and led to deeper learning about them. Many of the play episodes in which the teachers were invited to join were longer and led to deeper learning. This study has shown the importance of nature play for learning biology in early years.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Learning Biology in the Early Years Through Nature Play in the Forest: An Exploratory Study from Slovenia |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/978-3-031-44792-1_18 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44792-1_18 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. |
| Keywords: | Nature play, Biology, Early science, Forest, An exploratory study |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10183191 |
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