Nature as Co-teacher: The supportive function of nature for early childhood language education

Summary Research questions: 1. How are nature-based learning environments and language development related for children aged 2-7 years? 2. How can early childhood educators make nature-based places function as language learning environments in for language education? In chapter two the research started with a systematic review of primarily qualitative studies into the supportive function of playing in nature-based places for child development. We did so to get insight into the complex relation between nature-based places and play quality in ECE and how child development, more specifically cognitive development can benefit from nature play. By reviewing qualitative studies, I created an overview of aspects of play quality that are enabled and sustained by interactions with the nature-based place. Nature-based places afford more diversity in play categories, and play attitude (wellbeing and involvement) benefits from being in nature. Moreover, nature-based places afford cognitive play, characterized by creativity, exploration, problem solving, and meaning making. Furthermore, nature-based places contribute to the quality of teacher-child interactions; children are perceived as being more competent which allows them freedom to explore. Moreover, teachers reinforce children’s mobility and agency towards the supportive aspects of nature. The findings of our systematic review demonstrated how nature-based places afford play in a distinctive way, resulting in the concept of “nature play”, with outcomes for motor, social-emotional, and cognitive development. These findings connect the studies, presented in chapter three and four, with respectively kindergartners and preschoolers. In these two studies children played ten minutes in a nature-based place and a non-nature-based place, where language samples were taken. I compared the utterances produced by children in the two environments. The findings showed that children used different language while playing in nature-based places compared to non-nature-based places. Specifically, I found that in the nature-based place children are more talkative and their language is more complex, compared to their language in the non-nature-based place. The kindergartners produce more utterances, and the preschoolers more words. In both studies we also measured the quality of the language the children used. The kindergartners negotiated more often to communicate the meaning they attribute to the objects they are playing with, in nature-based places. This makes the utterances semantically more layered and complex. The preschoolers in chapter four produced more unique words which I interpreted as a measure for the quality of language production. The hypothesis, based on the findings of the systematic review, the possibility that there is a relation between the place where children play, and the quality and the quantity of their language production, was confirmed. The last study, presented in chapter five, shows how early childhood teachers can make use of the supportive function of nature-based places for language education. Since the majority of young children aged two to seven years receive ECE, it is important to know how teachers develop knowledge on including nature-based places in their language education. In this study fifty-five early childhood educators across five schools explored the supportive aspects of nature-based language teaching and learning language in early childhood. While exploring these aspects they focused on how language education in nature-based places contributed to the desired outcomes of language education. The results of the study revealed a new theory of practice for ECE language education. In a collaborative process with colleagues from practice and academic colleagues, they developed new forms of language education, based on the supportive function of nature for language experiences, carried it out, and evaluated it. One of the most valuable insights of this theory is that it suggests a pedagogical as well as a linguistic function of nature-based places. This indicates a new way of teaching language.