An Analysis of an Aspect of the Role of the Early Year Practitioner - Essay Example

?Introduction Outdoors environment provide ideal conditions for children learning and development because of its rich diversity, which facilitates active engagement with the natural space (Wells, 2000). One of the intended objectives of learning is to promote independence in children from early age and it is the desire of parents for their children to become confident individuals in their various adulthood roles. To promote achievement of the intended learning objectives and independence in young children, creation of an enabling environment is essential. Early childhood practitioners have a major role in ensuring that ideal and enabling outdoors and indoors environment is provided to the young children to foster independence. Because of the apparent differences between the outdoors and indoors environment, the roles of practitioners in promoting children independence vary in these two distinct learning situations. This paper explores the various roles of the practitioner when young children are learning both in outdoors and indoors in fostering the child’s independence. Wells (2000) argues that developing a confident and independent child involves creating an enabling environment that promotes mental health. Promoting independence in children is a multidisciplinary and social cultural undertaking, intended to achieve the favourable conditions that enhance the wellbeing of the child. This undertaken through various activities that enhance emotional resilience, through activities formulated to encourage self-confidence, and life skills, such interpersonal skills and resilience (Barnes, 2000). In learning institution, promotion of mental health or independence in children is achieved through various activities in both the outdoors and indoors setting. Nicol (2002, p93) defines outdoors environment as “a place that provides opportunities for a person to interact with the dynamic systems of nature and its elements”. The limitless interactions of the living and non-living things in nature provide children with unlimited opportunities of learning and development. In addition, the changing weather and seasonal patterns enables children appreciate and be cognisant of time and place. This offers them numerous opportunities of investigating various phenomena resulting from the climatic changes. Besides interacting with the environmental aspects, outdoors learning provides the children with limitless opportunities of engaging in social interactions with their peers and other members of the community (Kellert, 2005, p96-106). Outdoor environment provides three major types of learning, including environmental, personal and social education (Nicol, 2002, p52). This form of learning is accompanied by physical activities that play critical role in normal development of children and tackling health challenges such as obesity. Therefore exposing children to interact freely with the natural environment provides them with opportunities of engaging productively with nature (AIR, 2005). Higgins (1996) argues that failure to familiarize children to the environment adequately could induce fear of the natural world in them. Outdoors learning involves a wide variety of activities. Therefore, the role of practitioners is mainly restricted to facilitating the activities, using different multisensory and experiential techniques (Education Scotland, 2008, p83). These approaches promote children’s involvement in various physical, spiritual emotional, aesthetic and cognitive experiences as components of learning. Organising outdoor learning activities requires utmost consideration of the various relationships necessary for optimising the learning experience and ensuring the needs of the children are met. Thus, the practitioner should consider relationship between participants involved, the activities and the place where the outdoor activities take place (Education Scotland, 2008). According to Barnes (2000, p39), children need space and freedom and these necessities underscore the importance of outdoor learning. Space provides children with opportunities of engaging in physical activities. Development of physical skills is important for normal growth of children. Adequate space provides opportunities for the children to develop physical skills by engaging and experimenting in various activities. Through encouragement from practitioners children learn and perfect various physical skills such as balancing, running, hoping climbing and pedalling among others in a spacious outdoor environment (Barnes, 2000, pp60-71). Children need space in order to challenge and undertake calculated risks within the precincts of a safe environment. These opportunities are not adequately supplied in a confined environment. In addition, children need space to engage into larger and more active scale in relation to their development stage (Wells, 2000). The spacious outdoors environment provides children with unlimited movements with few constraints and it allows more room to engage in collaborative activities with their peers. These include teamwork and negotiation skills. According to Piaget (1977), children learn through construction of their own knowledge concerning the world and not by memorising facts. Thus, Dewey (1963) argues that learning in spacious and unsupervised environment provides greater opportunities of constructing knowledge independently than in an ordinary classroom that emphasises more on memorising facts. Adequate space provides children with limitless and challenging opportunities for their physical and intellectual development (AIR, 2005). According to Fjortoft and Sageie (2001), intellectual development of children is enhanced through various stimulating activities, which provoke their inquisitiveness and curiosity. Thus, the children learn how to explore various aspects, including experimenting and questioning, without the practitioners supervision, which enhances development of independent problem solving skills. Outdoor environment accord children the liberty to be in control of their own individual learning and making their own decisions, which promotes creativity. Kellert (2005) observed children playing using a see saw and noted how they quickly conceptualised the principle of placing different weights on various lengths of the devise to ensure it worked in play. These opportunities are not adequately provided in the ordinary classroom setting because outdoors has limitless opportunities of being active, messy and lively in addition to allowing them opportunities to pursue their own interests. In addition, outdoors accords the children an ideal time to experience a wide range of feelings emanating from observing and engaging in various natural phenomena in their play and other learning activities (Education Scotland, 2008). These activities could be as simple as calmly watching the occasional solar and lunar eclipses or thrilling activities such as skiing on the ice. The wide range of outdoor activities implies that the role of the practitioner should not be intrusive, but provide relevant guidance to ensure that the children play within the precincts of safe environment to prevent injuries and accidents. Outdoors learning is encompassing, providing an inclusive environment for every particular need of the child. Barnes (2000) argues that the outdoors takes care for diverse children’s abilities, interests and learning methods. Children have opportunities of being more imaginative and creative while in the outdoors. Ooooiuo argues that it is while in the outdoors that children have independently devised diverse methods of playing and using various materials and objects in natural environment. In the process, they acquire initiative and the ability to persevere and focus on a particular task for a long period without practitioner’s support (Bilton, 2004). Outdoors learning has several benefits to the learners. According to Higgins (1996, p37), nature, society and nature- society interactions are the major focus of outdoors learning. The activity involves interacting with other persons, development of new skills and carrying out pragmatic initiatives in conserving and influencing the society. The activities promote development of various learning outcomes, including social and personal development, gaining new knowledge, attitudes and values in addition to new beliefs and feelings. Indoors learning enables children to establish pragmatic connections between the world inside and outside the classroom. This interconnection enhances the development of new skills, knowledge and comprehension in a more significant manner (Wells, 2000, p118-124). Dahlgren and Szczepanski (1998:p29) argued that the outside environment exposes children to more stimulating surroundings that promotes creative thinking and the learning. This occurs due to the presence of challenging opportunities that demand critical thinking, exploration and questioning. The outdoors environment provides a different perspective of the real world from that learned in the classroom. This expands the perspectives of the learners and prepares them to experience greater diversity in addition to opportunities and complexities in the real world (Dahlgren, and Szczepanski, 1998). Outdoors activities transform the disposition of the children from the usual character they display in the classroom. Kellert (2005, p77) observed that pupils that are generally quiet in class could become talkative while withdrawn children become more collaborative with others in diverse activities in the outdoor environment. Outdoors environment provides diverse stimulating sensory experiences, which help the learner to acquire and construct knowledge independently because it involves application of diverse senses in the body. In addition, the unsupervised learning in the outdoors provides different and inspiring conditions that make the process more interesting to the children. These benefits are manifested in improvement of the children well being and attainment of various learning objectives (Nicol, 2002). A study conducted by AIR (2005) established five effects of outdoor learning to students. These impacts include cognitive, affective, physical and behavioural impacts in addition to social or interpersonal effects. Cognitive effects are demonstrated in the acquisition of knowledge and comprehension of other academic disciplines. Outdoors learning instils affective transformation in the children. Some affective impacts include changes in attitudes, beliefs and in self-awareness in addition to transformation of values. Interpersonal or social effects of outdoors learning include improvement of communication skills, team building and enhancing leadership skills of the children from an early age. Finally, learning outdoors impacts positively on the physical wellbeing of the children by enhancing their physical fitness and coordination of the mind with the various physiological activities (AIR, 2005, pp83-98). Fjortoft and Sageie (2001) noted remarkable improvements in personal character and changes in social interactions in young children after engaging in outdoors learning. In particular, children demonstrating challenging behaviour such as aggression on their peers, violence and unusual habits such as banging heads on desks and excessive attention seeking behaviour reported a decline in intensity of these traits (Fjortoft and Sageie, 2001, p42). In order to attain the required outcomes from outdoor learning activities, the presence of a skilled adult or practitioner is important. Besides acting as facilitators, children need adults for security and assurance while in the outdoors (Dahlgren and Szczepanski, 1998). Thus, practitioners should have the right attitude, understanding of the children interests and equipped with the right skills to attain the intended learning objectives from the outdoors environment. Children view practitioners as their role models and hence, it is imperative for the teachers to possess and portray characters that they would wish the children to emulate (Education Scotland, 2008). Various theories affirm the importance of outdoors learning experience and the role of practitioners in development of children. Examples of the educational theories include the theory of cognitive development advanced by the Jean Piaget, behavioural theories and social child development theories (Dewey, 1963). Cognitive development theory is based on arguments that children persistently recreate or reconstruct their own comprehension of a given phenomenon by active engagement with their environment until they ultimately attain a mature view (Piaget, 1926: p93). In this regard, Piaget (1977) compared the process of acquiring cognitive ability and knowledge to biological adaptation where organisms learn to flourish under various environmental changes. In relation to outdoors learning, Piaget (1977:p33-37) explained acquisition of cognition and knowledge using four concepts, namely assimilation, equilibrium, accommodation and schema. In Piaget perspective, schema is the mental framework that acclimatizes to the prevailing environmental input or stimulus. The mental structure or the schemata organises the perceived objects and events, grouping them in relation to the regular patterns (Piaget, 1926). In the contemporary outdoor learning experience, young children interact with living and non-living objects. Their perception of these objects is informed by a mental collection of features that characterise the object or the animal in question. Thus on observing an animal such as a cow, the child’s perception is influenced by internalised characteristics of the animal such as the four legs, presence of a tail and the sound that the animal produces among other features. On internalising these features, the young children would perceive an animal that possess similar observable features as a cow (Barnes, 2000). In this respect, outdoor environment promotes cognitive and intellectual development of young children more effectively because it provides practical experience of a particular phenomenon. Exposing young children to an environment with wide biological diversity enables them indentify with other features, which eventually help in distinguishing one object from another independently. Outdoor environment present children to different new experiences, and Piaget (1977) argued that a state of imbalance in the child brain develops that requires internal management. This results to restructuring of the child mental perception of the incident or object to accommodate the unfamiliar experience. This results to accumulation of new cognitive knowledge through the process of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the integration of the new knowledge with the inbuilt information within the child brain (Piaget, 1977; p63). When the child is exposed to more experiences in the outdoors environment, he or she applies the prior stored knowledge to explain or comprehend the new phenomenon. This process ultimately results to the restructuring of the prior knowledge to accommodate the new experience (Berliner and Calfee, 1996). Thus the teacher or the practitioner should formulate an ideal outdoors learning experience based on the analysis of the learner’s behaviour to enable the child develop their own knowledge. In view of cognitive development theory, learning in outdoors environment enables the children to acquire new knowledge, through practical engagement and develop new values such as appreciation of biological diversity independently. Besides the natural phenomena, social interactions that characterise outdoor learning such as playing empower the children with new knowledge and skills on building effective relationships with members of the school community and enhancement of personal effectiveness in different social contexts. Behaviourist theories emphasize on the role of environmental stimuli in influencing the behaviour and learning of the child. In the perspective of behaviourism theory, learning is a responsive reaction that occurs when appropriate stimuli is applied (Berliner and Calfee 1996). This theory is founded on provision of rewards or reinforcement in order to stimulate acquisition of the appropriate knowledge and behaviour. Berliner and Calfee (1996) found that providing spacious environment and freedom in the outdoors facilitated positive change in behaviour in children with challenging character. Outdoors environment provide the children with freedom of controlling their activities and the spacious conditions enables their participation in a wide range of learning activities such as Forest Schools independently. This contrasts with the convectional classroom setting where the teacher controls most activities, limiting creativity and independence. In planning for an outdoor learning experience, the practitioner consults with the children on the various activities they wish to participate. Dewey (1963) argues that collaborative approach enhances children’s motivation to learn, create and explore what they can master and conquer their fears, resulting to enhanced self-confidence and independence. In traditional classroom setting, there is little room for collaborative or interactive learning and the teacher makes most decisions pertaining to the academic learning. Traditional classroom setting requires order and disruptive activities are not usually tolerated because they interfere with concentration of the learners (Barnes, 2000). Thus, the role of a practitioner in a conventional classroom setting is to maintain order and hence the teacher acts as a disciplinarian. Although various techniques of encouraging more interactive learning are being adopted in various institutions for use in the classroom, outdoor learning provides limitless interactive experiences. Outdoor learning focuses on the interests of the children. Thus, the practitioner is required to select an area that arouses children’s imagination and creativity, in addition to encouraging relaxation, socialisation and physical activity (Barnes, 2000). Bilton (2004) argues that outdoors learning promotes social development of the child. Various educational theorists including John Bowlby, Albert Bandura and Lev Vygotsky formulated social development theories that examine the influence of environment to children learning. These theorists emphasised on the influence that the guardians, teachers or practitioners have in modifying or shaping the behaviour of young children in acquisition of knowledge (Berliner and Calfee, 1996). In view of these theories, the relationship between the practitioner and the learner plays a major role in attaining the intended learning objectives from outdoors environment. The nature of the child-practitioner interaction especially in the outdoor environment influences the future social conduct of the child in the society. In view of social learning theory, children learn by observing the behaviour and actions of other people (Barnes, 2000). Therefore, in outdoor learning activity, the practitioner should demonstrate high levels of conduct and portray virtues that he or she intends the children to emulate. Thus, the practitioner becomes the role model, from whom the children imitate appropriate characters, such as creativity, hard work, establishing cordial relations with other people and motivation to succeed. Dewey (1963) emphasised on the importance of creating outdoors activities that promote intrinsic motivation among the students. Although behavioural theorists emphasise on provision of extrinsic reinforcement to induce acquisition of knowledge in both outdoors and indoors environment, intrinsic motivations are equally influential (Barnes, 2000). Thus, the practitioner should facilitate outdoor activities that promote development of intrinsic motivations such as sense of achievement, pride and contentment after participating in a particular task. The practitioner should therefore establish the right foundation to encourage learners by being actively involved in the outdoors activities together with the young children. In outdoor learning activities, social development theorists highly recommend the practitioners to engage the children in practical or hands on activities (Dahlgren and Szczepanski 1998). Outdoor activities, where the children have freedom to choose their preferred outdoor activities and sufficient space promote creativity and imagination, which fosters independence, a trait that could be transferred in the conventional classroom setting (Barnes, 2000). The ability to question, experiment and observe the various natural and social phenomena in the outdoors fosters development of several skills, including inquisitiveness or questioning, ability to follow particular procedure, manipulation of various apparatus and equipment, which are suitable attributes in science based disciplines conducted within a classroom setting. Outdoor learning promotes acquisition of other skills that are transferable to ordinary classroom setting. These include communication, interpersonal and analytical skills that are important in subjects conducted within classroom setting such as languages, mathematics and social sciences. Higgins (1996) noted that outdoor activities such as planting trees promote the understanding on contemporary environmental concerns such as global warming, environmental degradation, hydrological cycle and other important natural processes. Environmental activities are suitable for students from diverse levels of academic learning, ranging from young children at orientation stage of basic sciences to those specialised in different environmental related studies. Thus, the attributes acquired from engaging in outdoor activities are conveniently harnessed into the classroom setting and the society. Conclusion The main role of the practitioner in outdoors learning is to facilitate various activities undertaken by the learners in order to ensure acquisition of the intended knowledge and skills. Researchers have established that outdoors learning has positive impacts on the learners and it instils useful attributes and skills such as independence. These include changing the learner’s attitudes, values and self-perceptions, which promotes acquisition of knowledge. The transformation empowers the learners with renewed sense of independence, self-awareness, locus of control, the capacity to cope in various situations and enhancing their efficiency in diverse situations. Moreover, outdoors learning empowers the learners with social and interpersonal skills, which are essential attributes in both the classroom and the larger community setting (Berliner and Calfee 1996). However, the effectiveness of a practitioner in providing outdoors learning is undermined by various factors, which include, safety and health concerns of the learners, lack of sufficient training and skills, in addition to the strong emphasis that learning institutions places on classroom teaching. Moreover, lack of relevant resources, adequate time and sufficient support from education institutions are major impediments (Dahlgren and Szczepanski 1998). Bibliography AIR.(2005). Effects of outdoor education programs for children in California. 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