Abstract:
"Let's go outside" is where I began: I became intrigued by how often I saw evidence of
children's enthusiasm for the outdoors when I visited centres as a supervisor of early
childhood teacher trainees on practicum. Having discovered how little research there
was into young children's outdoor play, I wanted to investigate this topic, particularly
because I suspected that what we do in New Zealand is very different from the outdoor
play described in overseas research reports, where the typical scenario is a brief outdoor
recess.
The belief that outdoor play contributes to young children's development dates back to
Rousseau (1712-1778) and Froebel (1782-1852) and the tradition continued in early
kindergartens in the United States (Frost and Wortham, 1988), English nursery schools
(Straw, 1990), and also within the New Zealand kindergarten movement (May, 1997).
Over time, however, the commitment to outdoor play has been challenged by other
pressures - increasing urbanisation with a concomitant reduction in access to the
outdoors; increasingly academic programme orientation (Frost, 1992); supervision and
safety concerns (Bilton, 1993; Frost and Wortham, 1988); and even staff reluctance
(Bilton, 1993; Stine, 1997).
