This final key in the series, which brings together all the rest, is on how to have a clear policy on the outdoors for your children which details the why, what and how of where you want to go together.
KEY 12: ROAD MAP
A good outdoors policy:
- is a shared understanding and approach to outdoor play, shaped by the views and aspirations of children, families and staff
- sets out your stance, rationale, vision and plans to develop provision and practice outdoors
- clarifies details of agreed procedures in the operation and management of outdoor play
- provides induction and ongoing support for all staff.
WHY IS THIS ISSUE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE OUTDOORS?
Without being clear and articulate about why you are developing your outdoor provision, what you are aiming to achieve and how you plan to do so, it is difficult to gain the support of others involved and to make effective, sustained progress. Conversely, putting time and effort into the process of developing an outdoor policy has much value in itself, while generating a loud call to action that everyone then wants to rally around.
When change takes place, it is really important that everyone understands the rationale for what you are seeking to do. It is essential that the values which underpin these changes are shared by all involved. Establishing belief in the importance of being outside, trusting that learning happens well in the outdoors, and committing to increasing the amount of time and the quality of experiences children can access in the outdoor environment, is a gradual and long-term process that requires wide-ranging support, ongoing energy and lots of small steps of success.
Working on a coherent and clearly expressed vision can engender a strong sense of purpose and direction, as well as establishing a clear pedagogical base for learning through play outdoors. This work will pay off! Generating commitment to achieve high-quality outdoor provision will stimulate enthusiasm and the desire to act on behalf of all your children. Personally, I love the mantra ‘think big; take small steps; never give up’.
WHAT DO WE NEED TO BE WORKING UPON IN PRACTICE: VALUES
At the heart of achieving successful and satisfying outdoor provision is a values-based, shared understanding and approach to outdoor play. This captures your beliefs about the need for children to be outdoors and why learning should be offered outside as well as inside, as well as the nature of the experiences you want children to have there. Values come from within, growing from the beliefs that we hold.
Our values matter: they guide our practice, giving us the starting points for deliberations about what we should do and reaching decisions about how to respond or act. Through extensive observation, reflection, questioning and debate, practitioners can gradually come to agree and express their shared values. These then become the collective basis for making judgements and decisions.
A dedicated outdoor policy pins down your rationale, vision and values for learning outdoors, links to your overall development plan and helps to shape the setting's approach to and management of outdoor play. A road map provided by an outdoor policy can help you know how you want to get there – and, along with determined and nurturing leadership, makes it more likely that you will arrive. Such a framework can then be utilised to record details of agreed procedures and practices in the operation and management of outdoor learning and play that are securely based on your rationale, values and aims, giving everyone a clear reference point for decision-making.
Review and evaluation are, of course, critical to maintaining high quality in outdoor provision, adult roles and the effectiveness of children's experiences. This needs to be done by a variety of means so that practitioners keep on checking how well things are working and looking for ways to continually improve. Creating a Space to Grow(see below) provides many ideas for including children's views and perspectives in these evaluations.
HOW TO MAKE A START AT DEVELOPING PROVISION AND PRACTICE
Things to consider, discuss and evaluate
- How is your setting's vision and approach to learning outdoors being developed and moved forward? What CPD or support could you access to help you to do this as a team?
- Is your vision and approachto outdoor play and learning being shaped by the views and aspirations of children, families and all staff?
- How are your stance, rationale, aims and plans for action set out so as to aid agreement and drive forward actions for developing outdoor provision and practice?
Things to explore and read
- Reasons to be Outside; Valuing the Outdoors; Putting Values into Practice – three booklets by Jan White and Liz Edwards: https://muddyfaces.co.uk/shop/books-identification/author/jan-white
- ‘Provision for Learning Outdoors: the why, the what and the how of play outdoors within early childhood education’ by Jan White and Sue Stokoe in Achieving Excellence in the Early Years: A guide for headteachers(Early Education, 2015).
- Creating a Space to Grow: Developing your enabling environment outdoorsby Gail Ryder-Richardson (2nd edn. Routledge, 2014).
Things to do
- Reflect as a team and with parents upon what is important about being outdoors for your particular children and families, and how you would like your outdoor environment to feel. Remember that staff also need it to work well for them too.
- Consider also what kinds of experiences you want your children to have through your outdoor provision: record what you all want your children to be able to do, feel, experience and share together. These two discussions will help to shape and articulate your purpose for your provision outdoors, and therefore guide decisions about planning, adult roles and any physical developments you make in the future.
- Take your children to a new and greener environment, preferably with parents, and watch what they do there. Discuss with parents and staff what they thought children most wanted to do. Observing your children in action in a rich outdoor environment will give clear messages about their perspectives, providing very useful leads on what is missing and what to develop in your own outdoor environment.
Long-term training that helps you know where you want to go and how to get there
The Certificate in Outdoor Practice has been designed to enable practitioners to provide effective learning experiences outdoors for children in the early years, every day, throughout the year. This new qualification (Open College Network, Level 3) runs as a mix of experiential and ‘digging deeper’ discussion sessions one day per month across a whole year, followed by making concrete changes in your own setting, with observation, reflection and evaluation of these developments.
Through a prolonged, hybrid approach of training and small-scale action research, it aims to embed long-term, transformational practice that sustains continuing development of both setting/school and staff team long after the course. Course participant Abbi Cooper, Reception/Year 1 teacher at Bradfield Dungworth Primary School in Sheffield, is excited by how far they have come in a short period of time and feels that the experiential sessions give her ‘time to actually think, “this is how a child would be feeling and thinking”’. She values the child-centred approach together with the three-fold focus on Why?, What? and How? She says, ‘Giving us the theory, research and evidence behind it makes it easier to get across to people who might not understand early childhood development and be more focused on curriculum.’
Looking back, she feels that before starting the course, the school's planning for the outside environment was generally an afterthought. But six months into the programme, the in-depth, ongoing experience – along with the requirement to put something from each training day into practice at her school – has ‘flipped’ her team's approach. ‘Now we are making far more of what the massive, free resource of being outside has to offer. Outdoors is so rich: for example, there is always maths available. We’ve turned how we work on its head and now bring that inside and carry that on indoors. It's been great, I’ve loved it.’
Professor Jan White is author of several books on outdoor provision and practice and co-director of the specialist training company Outdoors Thinking
