Climate change is an urgent global issue that requires concern and action among a climate literate citizenry. Early childhood climate change education (CCE) affords strong potential for developing this climate literate citizenry. Early childhood educators are critical for this endeavor, and their climate change perspectives, teaching practices,…

Empathy can be a powerful means for positive social change and for caring action toward wildlife and nature. Thus, there is a need for interventions that build the capacity of early childhood educators to support empathy development in young children, given the critical developmental period of early childhood and the relevance of empathy to…

In the United States, early childhood programs inclusive of nature experiences for young children vary widely in terms of time spent outdoors; purpose of the program, approaches to use of the environment, curricular aims and support of young children's development. A commonality across many of these early childhood programs available in the United…

The first purpose of this qualitative study was to explore self-reported significant life experiences of early childhood educators to determine whether experiences of traditional pre-K educators differed from those who taught in nature-based programs. The second purpose was to explore whether these experiences influenced their teaching practices.…

Connectedness to nature (C2N) shows a positive relationship with many factors supporting children's health, wellbeing, and development. In addition, C2N has been shown to have a positive relationship with learning about and caring for nature. Despite a long history of outdoor education in early childhood settings in Sweden, C2N is not a concept…

Tree climbing is one aspect of nature play; however, it is limited in many areas due to fear of liability, heightened safety awareness, unclear policies, accessibility, and restrictive outdoor play time. This study investigated current practices concerning tree climbing in early childhood settings with the objective of creating recommendations,…

To support a sustainable planet, preschools need to engage young children with sustainability education. In the United States of America (USA), nature-based preschool programs are likely to promote environmental science and nature education, given their outdoor curricula, but very little is known about how these programs might also cultivate…

Recognizing the inherent value in outdoor play and learning for young children, we focused upon the practices and perspectives of adults at an early childhood center as the outdoor play areas were transformed into outdoor classrooms. A salient finding emerging from the data exhibited a gap between constructivist child-led theories of play and…

Increasing demands of accountability and academic readiness across U.S. preschools are often accompanied by decreased play and time outdoors during the school day. The nature preschool movement, grounded in a desire to foster connection to the natural world while also supporting important developmental processes and school readiness, counteracts…

Time spent outdoors benefits children's physical, social and psychological development, although children today spend far less time outdoors than children of previous generations. The nature-based school initiative has grown in popularity as a means of increasing children's connection with nature and harnessing its benefits for their educational…