Preparing Innovative ECEC Educators: A Self-Study of Outdoor Pedagogy in Higher Education

This research reports on the challenges of curriculum change in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Ireland, and how changes have highlighted the opportunities for innovative pedagogical practices in the university programmes for ECEC educators. We employed a self-study of practice (S-SP) methodology to better understand the outdoor learning (OL) practice of one university lecturer teaching an undergraduate ECEC degree. The 2024 revisions to the Irish national early childhood curriculum framework (Aistear) created both challenges and opportunities. The framework identifies the merits of learning outdoors for creating greater recognition of the outdoors as an important site for learning with children aged zero to six years. The focus of the study was the lecturer’s pedagogical approach to meeting that challenge and creating opportunities to build students’ competence to deliver the Aistear’s curricular aims through OL. In this qualitative S-SP study, the researchers used reflective journals, critical friendship dialogues, and group interviews with students to interrogate the lecturer’s pedagogical strategies and their impact. Using reflexive thematic analysis, five themes developed, concerning pedagogical strategies, student learning dispositions, new knowledge for practice, student gains and experiences, and key aspects of the lecturer’s practice. Findings show that purposeful experiential teaching methods fostered student agency and confidence to facilitate OL with young children. Although based upon one cohort, this research illustrates how self-study can act as an effective method to illuminate the complexities of teaching using outdoor pedagogies in HE, and can contribute to the preparation of agentic and innovative ECEC educators.