''How do families know what makes a great bush kinder? '' : understanding the provision of nature-based early childhood education programs in Victoria, Australia

2024-09-19T14:04:09+08:00

Bush kinders, one example of a nature-based approach to early childhood education, is rapidly becoming a staple of Australian providers’ programs. Since the early 2010s, the Australian state of Victoria has been a place where these nature-based programs have been on the rise. With increasing bush kinder numbers due to government initiatives and a deeper community understanding of the benefits of young children spending time in nature, we began to investigate the factors, such as location, session frequency and age grouping of sessions (e.g. 3 or 4 year old children), would allow families to have a deeper understanding of the provision of these nature-based approaches to early childhood education and care. We probed the importance of socioeconomic factors and quality assessment processes in kindergartens to understand whether these factors determine the bush kinder program provision. We also sought to understand the publicly available resources that inform families and educators about bush kinder provision. This paper is informed by a longitudinal ethnographic study of bush kinders. It applies Naidoo’s stocktake approach to gather qualitative data drawn from a desktop review of web-based, publicly available secondary sources including academic publications, government reports, books, and electronic databases. Focusing on Victoria where bush kinders are proliferating partly due to state government initiatives, in this paper we ask, what measures exist to understand the provision of Australian nature-based early childhood education programs? The study finds that a detailed database of Australian bush kinders is needed for families to make informed decisions about services who offer nature-based programs as part of their ECEC. Location, socio-economic and quality assurance ratings data that allow us to understand characteristics of Australian nature-based early childhood education settings are of value for families to understand the bush kinder programs available to their children.

5-6 years old children's mental representations of water in plants

2024-09-24T15:14:13+08:00

The concept of water holds a central position in almost every curriculum that is developed within early childhood education. The current study presents the findings of research on the way 5–6 year old children deal with the issue of the existence of water in plants. The research was qualitative and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with 66 children. The data was analyzed using content analysis based on the transcripts of the interviews. The results showed that only a small number of children were able to conceptualize the existence of water in plants, however these children were able to describe and make predictions that were in line with school knowledge. Consequently, this field constitutes an interesting area for further research and development of properly designed activities. Limitations of the current research were the restricted and convenient sample as well as the choice of descriptive analysis.

Research on Preschool and Primary Education

''How do families know what makes a great bush kinder? '' : understanding the provision of nature-based early childhood education programs in Victoria, Australia

5-6 years old children's mental representations of water in plants