TORONTO, June 17,
2024 /CNW/ - A new report from the Lawson Foundation
"More Than a New Course: A Framework for Embedding Outdoor
and Land-based Pedagogies in Post-Secondary ECE
Programs," provides guidelines to help
integrate Outdoor and Land-based teaching and learning in
post-secondary early childhood education (ECE) programs across
Canada, aiming to get faculty,
students, and ultimately children outdoors and connected to nature
and the Land.
The purpose of this framework is to transform post-secondary
education in Canada, equipping
Early Childhood Educators to implement Outdoor and Land-based
approaches and guiding senior administrators and policymakers
to support these practices through necessary policy and practice
changes. This framework supports post-secondary institutions to
achieve multiple strategic priorities for student success and
teaching excellence, the important work of Reconciliation with
Indigenous Peoples, and environmental sustainability.
"Drawing on the expertise of an Indigenous and non-Indigenous
working group, this framework provides a vision for
transformational change that supports cultivating a new generation
of early childhood educators who value and promote Outdoor and
Land-based approaches in their practice with young children," says
the Lawson Foundation President & CEO, Cathy Taylor. "This work is timely, as
post-secondary institutions across Canada respond to the Canada-Wide Early
Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) plan that emphasizes the demand
for qualified early childhood educators."
For too long, early childhood education in Canada has favoured indoor learning
environments over the outdoors and lacked recognition of Indigenous
Land-based approaches. As a result, young children have missed out
on formative experiences critical to their healthy development.
Noella Wells (Ootaihkimmiaki),
Elder and Advisor for the framework from the Piikani Nation,
Blackfoot Confederacy, highlighted this integration of worldviews,
saying, "This framework offers post-secondary leaders a vision to
bring together diverse worldviews about learning on the Land and in
nature, and concrete actions to transform ECE programs."
Research shows that only 7% of post-secondary ECE program
descriptions in Canada currently
include a module or course related to outdoor and/or Indigenous
Land-based approaches. Yet Outdoor and Land-based approaches in ECE
settings offer tremendous benefits for children, including helping
them become healthier and more active, increasing self-regulation
and resilience, enhancing social skills through peer interaction,
and learning through play. In addition to these benefits that
support healthy child development and learning, this approach
fosters children's environmental awareness and connection to the
Land, each other and all living things. These benefits extend to
the ECE faculty and their students who teach and learn outdoors and
on the Land.
By integrating Euro-Western worldviews of outdoor play and
Indigenous ways of knowing, being, doing, and connecting, we can
create a future where early childhood educators in Canada are encouraged and equipped to use
Outdoor and Land-based teaching and learning approaches to support
young children's learning and well-being through respect,
relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility with the Land, for the
benefit of all.
About the Lawson Foundation
The Lawson Foundation is a
Canadian family foundation that invests in and engages with ideas,
people and organizations that contribute to the healthy development
of children and youth. Learn more about the Foundation and its work
in supporting outdoor play at www.lawson.ca.
*Note: A French translation of the framework will be
available in September 2024.
SOURCE The Lawson Foundation