6533b823fe1ef96bd127df57

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Outdoor day-care centres – a culturalization of nature: how do children relate to nature as educational practice?

subject

description

This article will discuss how children and adults experience a certain outdoor environment as part of an educational practice, through the activities the adults and children have. It will further discuss how these activities realize cultural values through the educators' and children's activities. In Norway the use of outdoor environments has become increasingly central as part of the pedagogical/educational practice (in both schools and kindergartens). The outdoor kindergartens in Norway are organized in different ways, the common feature being that the educationist and the children are outdoors the most of the day, every day, in all sorts of weather. The outdoor kindergartens leave traces in natural environments surrounding rural and urban districts that signify educational practice that can seem as opposed to ordinary kindergartens. This article is based on fieldwork in a Norwegian outdoor kindergarten. Room and place are crucial to people who inhabit them. Gagen (2000, 213) says the following: Learnin...