Outdoor Affordances in Early Childhood Education and Care Settings

Adults’ and Children’s Perspectives

Abstract

This paper explores the experience of the outdoors in early childhood education in urban areas. It is based on fieldwork conducted in four settings in Dublin, Ireland in 2005. Using the central concept of affordance, the paper builds on Kyttä’s earlier work (2002; 2004) by considering young children’s experiences of the outdoors in terms of perceived and utilized affordances. These are analyzed in relation to three fields of action in early childhood education and care settings: indoor-outdoor connectedness, enclosed outdoor space, and the wider outdoors. Such a framework, it is proposed, offers a useful means to evaluate outdoor provision of services for young children