This article considers Leather’s (2018) Critique of Forest School in the UK in relation to the growth of nature kindergarten programs in Victoria, Australia. Leather explores concerns with the Forest School model that has developed in the UK context, and suggests the Forest School model he describes has also reached Australia. This article by members of the Early Childhood Outdoor Learning Network (ECOLN) addresses areas of concern raised by Leather in relation to the proliferation of outdoor preschool programs in Victoria. The ECOLN is a practitioner network engaged in supporting services and teachers of early childhood outdoor programs.

In this article we focus on three of Leather’s concerns - the direct importation of Forest School practices from Scandinavia in the absence of local context; the absence of minimum teaching qualification requirements for Forest School practitioners; and the absence of a ‘pedagogy of play’ in outdoor education in the UK. While we can make no comment on the extent to which Leather’s characterisation of the UK context is correct, we share Leather’s concern regarding standardisation of Forest School practices and the commodification of nature play, and agree that these programs are best provided by qualified teachers with an understanding of play-based pedagogy. We argue that the growth of nature kindergarten in Australia has seen services develop independent programs in parallel, rather than directly import models from the UK or Scandinavia, and that the regulatory context in Australia has provided protective factors that go some way toward alleviating the concerns identified by Leather. This article presents an exploration of three Victorian early childhood outdoor learning programs and the conditions under which they emerged. While the past decade has seen an increased focus on the benefits of nature in both the popular and academic literature, we support Leather’s suggestion that further research is required, in particular regarding these types of early childhood programs in the Australian context.

Early childhood education: nature and nature play

There is perhaps no more natural, romantic or indeed, unchallenged coupling than that of children with nature (Taylor 2013). From the pioneering traditions of Rousseau’s ‘Emile’ and Fröbel’s ‘Kinder Garten,’ children and nature have long been considered ‘natural’ companions. The recent resurgence of interest in the outdoors and nature for supporting young children’s education, health, wellbeing and environmental stewardship draws on traditional and contemporary theories of early childhood education and the wealth of evidence to suggest that contact with nature has myriad benefits for young children.

The oft repeated benefits include: improving motor fitness, balance and coordination (Fjørtoft 2004; Grahn, 1997 cited in Wells and Evans 2003); reducing near sightedness (French et al. 2013; He et al. 2015); increasing Vitamin D levels (McCurdy et al. 2010); reducing risk of obesity (Wolch et al. 2011); improving resilience and relationship skills (Chawla et al. 2014); reducing stress, anger and anxiety (Chawla and Nasar 2015); decreasing the symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (Faber Taylor et al. 2001; Faber Taylor and Kuo 2011; Kuo and Faber Taylor 2004) and restoring positive emotions (Roe and Aspinall 2011).

Importantly, the last decade has witnessed the development of a growing body of popular authorship concerned with the benefits of nature generally and nature play in particular. Richard Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder” in Last Child in the Woods (Louv 2010, p.100) popularising the research on the benefits for children’s health and wellbeing while decrying the loss of nature and its effect on contemporary childhood. His published work and associated lecture tours set in motion an international popular movement of parents, schools, governments and non-government organisations concerned with (re)connecting children to nature. According to Taylor (2013), Louv successfully drew attention to concurrent contemporary crises: the loss of natural habitat (nature) and the perceived loss of childhood and play itself (Taylor 2013). Louv’s work tapped into concerns raised by others about children’s future capacity to save the earth if they were not deeply connected to it in early childhood (Kahn and Kellert 2002; Kaplan 1995; Kellert 1997; Kellert and Wilson 1995; Sobel 1993).

Yet the recent (re)popularisation of nature in early childhood pedagogy is not without its critics. Taylor (2013) has sought to disrupt the popular and increasingly dominant discourse which conflates romanticised and valorised constructions of early childhood and nature (Taylor 2013). Taylor’s reconstructive critique intends not to “discard the relationships between nature and childhood, but to hijack it from the romantics, to politicise and reorient and reconfigure it as a lively and un-foreclosed set of relations with a different set of political and ethical affordances” (Taylor 2013, p. xiv). Taylor is supported by other early childhood scholars such as Malone and Truong (2017) in offering a post-humanist critique of sustainability and environmental education in early childhood. At the risk of oversimplifying, they seek to reconfigure “human-nature relations” (Malone and Truong 2017, p. 6) as a means of decentring human actors and acknowledging the increasing importance of “human/more-than-human relations” (p.9) in the age of increasing environmental uncertainty. Their work seeks to move the discussion beyond that which conceives of nature solely in terms of its benefit to humans.

However, concern with the benefits of nature for humans persists, particularly for children in the field of education. A growing body of literature is concerned with green schoolyards and the effect of nature in educational settings on academic outcomes (Wells et al. 2015), as well as children’s social and emotional development and mental health (Chawla et al. 2014). While Leather (2018) critiques the quality of some of the earlier evaluative literature regarding forest schools coming out of the UK, the work of Malone and Waite (2016) has sought to take the discussion from evidence for, to the impact of “natural schooling” (p.5) in the UK. They call for further research that is larger in scale and better coordinated. While there are studies that have explored the types of programs that are emerging in primary school education (Lloyd and Gray 2014) and out-of-school-care settings (Crosby and Gray 2016) in Australia, the focus on school and out-of-school settings does not take account of the early childhood outdoor learning settings or nature kindergartens with which we are concerned. There is limited literature concerned specifically with nature kindergarten programs in Australia (Elliot and Chancellor 2014). Further research is needed to understand the particular contexts of, and the practices within these programs in the Australian context.

The growth of nature kindergarten in Victoria

The emergence of Forest Schools in the UK is variously characterised by Leather (2018) and others as a product that was ‘brought’ (Dee 2017; Maynard 2007) or imported to Britain in 1993 from Denmark (Maynard 2007). However, as Williams-Siegfredsen (2012), a member of the initial study group that established the concept in the UK points out, there is no Forest School in Denmark. “Forest School was a made up English name” (Williams-Siegfredsen 2012, p.1) for what she and colleagues had seen in Denmark’s “skovbornehaver” (p. 1) (forest or wood kindergartens), “skovguppe” (p.1) (forest or wood groups) and “naturbornehaver” (p.1) (nature kindergartens) as well as their ordinary childcare settings that utilised an outdoor space. Leather characterises Forest School in the UK as a concept imported from Scandinavia, which has taken on a particular branding in the UK. While we make no attempt to comment on whether his assertions are correct in the UK context, he also suggests that the UK model he describes has spread to Australia. While it is a minor point in Leather’s analysis, it has inspired us to respond to each of his critiques of the UK experience in the context of the emergence of nature kindergarten in Victoria, Australia.

There are few services in Australia that call themselves Forest Schools, not least because in Australia areas of vegetation analogous to European forest or woodland are more commonly known as ‘the bush’. The last decade has seen a steady increase in the number of preschool early childhood programs where children access a natural outdoor setting (the bush, the beach, local parklands, creeks or botanical gardens, etc.) for an extended period of time each week. A number of these services call this aspect of their program ‘Bush Kinder’ although not all services use this term. In this article we use the term ‘nature kindergarten’ to denote a concept that is inclusive of a range of outdoor kindergarten programs, including those that do not access the bush.

The emergence of nature kindergarten in Victoria has not, to this point, been centralised, has not involved a roll-out of standardised training and has not included the adoption of a set of codified practices. It has emerged in a number of separate individual services, usually under the guidance of teachers and management committees, and has taken a form suited to the environment where each individual preschool is located. For many urban services this means the ‘nature’ element of their program may be conducted on public land, in areas of local parkland managed by municipal councils, botanical gardens or the state government (Kids in Nature Network forthcoming). The exact number of preschools accessing a nature site in this way is not currently known, although estimates suggest around 100–150 services are operating in Victoria at the time of writing (Kids in Nature Network forthcoming; Elliot 2016).

While Forest Schools in the UK can decide to link with their national curriculum (O’Brien and Murray 2007, p.250; Dee 2017, p. 137) this is not optional for services operating nature kindergarten in Australia. Australian services are legally required to operate under the National Quality Framework (NQF) – a national system that regulates qualifications and includes an approved curriculum framework. As such, one of the factors influencing the development of place-based and locally specific nature kindergartens in Victoria is the pervasive regulatory context in the early childhood sector.

Regulatory context of early childhood education in Victoria

In the decade to 2017, early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Australia has undergone a series of national reforms under the National Quality Agenda for early childhood education. The National Quality Framework (NQF) was the result of a national partnership agreement between all Australian governments to “work together to provide better educational and development outcomes for all children” (Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority [ACECQA] 2016). The NQF operates under an applied law system and corresponding regulations, the National Quality Standard (NQS), an assessment and rating process, and approved learning frameworks for long day care, family day care, preschool /kindergarten and outside school hours care (ACECQA 2016). The NQF increased educator-to-child ratios, mandated increased minimum qualifications for educators working in ECEC and provided for every child to have access to 600 hours of preschool taught by a qualified early childhood teacher in the year prior to school entry.

The nature kindergarten programs that have emerged in Victoria have developed within the context of core early childhood education provision, as part of an approved preschool program, rather than as add-on or standalone programs, as Leather describes in the UK; and this means they are subject to the regulatory conditions of the NQF. Several of the NQF reforms, in particular minimum qualifications, the national quality standard (NQS) and the use of an approved curriculum framework, offer safeguards against the concerns Leather raises with Forest Schools in the UK. In the following sections we consider each of these in turn.

Minimum qualifications for nature kindergarten practitioners

Leather outlines concerns regarding the commodification and standardisation of Forest School qualifications in the UK. In particular, he laments that Forest School can be developed and delivered by level 3 Forest School Leaders in the absence of a formal teaching qualification; in other words, “a level of education below that of first year undergraduate degrees” (Leather 2018, p.6). Leather acknowledges that many Forest School practitioners have a range of other teaching qualifications and experiences, but stresses that none of these are a requirement for running a Forest School program.

By contrast, the regulatory context for nature kindergarten in Australia means programs must have staff with specialist early childhood qualifications. Even where educators are not required to hold a teaching qualification, there is a requirement for specialist early childhood training. The national regulations require that a minimum of 50% of all educators required for the service (a particular early childhood centre) to meet ratios must hold at least a Diploma level qualification, and the remaining educators must hold a Certificate III level qualification specialised in early childhood education (Education and Care Services National Regulations 2016). While diploma and certificate qualifications are below that of first year undergraduate degrees, all services must also employ at least one tertiary qualified early childhood teacher (Education and Care Services National Regulations 2016). Requirements for Victorian state-funded preschool programs are even more stringent. In addition to the national requirements for educator qualifications, to be eligible for kindergarten funding in Victoria preschool programs must be planned and delivered by a tertiary qualified Early Childhood Teacher who must be registered with the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT 2017).

The quality assurance component of the NQF provides each service with a rating against each standard within the NQS. This reinforces the requirements for educators to hold qualifications in early childhood education. Services must ensure that a suitably qualified and experienced teacher or coordinator “leads the development of the curriculum and ensures the establishment of clear goals and expectations for teaching and learning,” as stated in standard 7.1, element 7.1.4 (ACECQA 2017a).Footnote 1 The qualifications required are generalist training in early childhood education. While “Forest School Leader Training” is now available in other states in Australia (Nature Play Queensland 2017, para.1), operating a nature kindergarten in Victoria not does not require any additional qualifications relating to outdoor education. In fact, the situation most commonly evidenced in nature kindergarten programs in Victoria is the opposite of Leather’s characterisation of the UK model; rather than educators with specialised nature qualifications and no generalist education training, Victoria is more likely to have qualified teachers facilitate outdoor learning without Forest School branded training.

Access to natural materials, natural environments and outdoor play are explicitly promoted by Australian curriculum frameworks, and support for sustainability education and practices is included in the NQS, which mandates that a service should “care for the environment and support children to become environmentally responsible” (ACECQA 2017b, p.1) by embedding sustainability and respect for the environment in everyday practices. Of course, the extent to which these sustainability practices are actually embedded will vary from service to service (Elliot and Davis 2009). As such, the extent to which the NQS offers a safeguard against the potential emergence of the issues raised by Leather should not be overstated.

The National Quality Standard: integrated teaching and learning

Leather identifies pedagogy as another area of concern regarding Forest Schools in the UK. In particular he highlights its reliance on a “pedagogy of play” (Leather 2018, p. 5) that is not currently familiar to or widely practiced by educators in outdoor education in the UK. He suggests that while the importance of learning through play has been widely established in early childhood education, an integrated pedagogical approach to play as described by Wood (2010), which comprises both child-initiated and adult-directed learning, may create dissonance for many outdoor educators in the UK.

For nature kindergarten programs in Australia this issue is addressed by the early childhood qualifications of the teacher as well as the regulatory framework. The NQS requires that early childhood services must ensure “an approved learning framework informs the development of a curriculum that enhances each child’s learning and development” (ACECQA 2017a, p. 53). For kindergartens in Victoria this means one of two curriculum frameworks must inform the program, with teachers referencing either Belonging, Being and Becoming: the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia (EYLF), a play based curriculum framework that applies to the education and care of all children in Australia aged 0–5 years, or the Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework (VEYLDF) for the education and care of children aged 0-8 yrs. The VEYLDF aligns with and builds on the EYLF, “extend[ing] the principles, practice and outcomes to accommodate the contexts and age ranges of children and young people who attend school age care settings” (Garvis et al. 2012, p. 2). These frameworks are explicitly founded on a pedagogy of play.

The NQS requires that educators “respond to children’s ideas and play and extend children’s learning through open ended questions, interactions and feedback,” which is defined in Element 1.2.2 as “responsive teaching and scaffolding” (ACECQA 2017a, p. 53). In this way the NQS requires services and educators in Australia to apply the kind of integrated pedagogical approaches that Leather describes which include both “child led and adult directed” opportunities for learning (Wood 2010, p. 21). The curriculum frameworks outline “planning and implementing learning through play” (Australian Government Department of Education and Workplace Relations 2009, p. 14), and intentional teaching and scaffolding as key “principles of early childhood pedagogy that underpin practice” (p. 14). This commitment to pedagogy that is at once child-led and adult-directed is echoed in the VEYLDF, which characterises “integrated teaching and learning approaches as the sixth of eight foundational ‘practice principles’ of the curriculum framework” (Department of Education and Training (DET) 2015, p.15).

Integrated teaching and learning is visually represented in the VEYLDF as a triple helix and defines a pedagogy of play and learning which is concurrently: child-directed (i.e., it involves child-led exploration, experimentation, investigation and creativity controlled by the child); adult-guided (in which the adult is involved in play and learning following the child’s interests and responding to spontaneous learning opportunities); and adult-led (which involves intentional teaching, direct instruction and scaffolding that fosters high level thinking) (Department of Education and Training (DET) 2015; a comprehensive evidence paper on the development of integrated teaching and learning in the VEYLDF can be found in Marbina et al. 2011).

For teachers in nature kindergarten programs in Victoria this interplay of pedagogical approaches may take various forms across a range of learning opportunities and settings. For example, a child’s spontaneous discovery of a dead sea animal on the beach during the outdoor program (child-led exploration) might lead to a subsequent investigation in which the child(ren) guide an inquiry to identify the animal or hypothesize about what happened to it, seeking guidance from the teacher and engaging the teacher in their play and learning as they ask questions. At this point the teacher might use this experience to extend the children’s critical thinking and, rather than answer the questions outright, facilitate or guide the children’s observation and/or documentation of the animal – for example by encouraging them to take photos, measurements or drawings for use in further research back at the kindergarten – and perhaps intentionally introducing mathematical and scientific concepts or facilitating the development of fine motor coordination or literacy skills as they document and higher order thinking as they hypothesize (adult directed intentional teaching). The role of the teacher in each aspect of this experience is to “observe, evaluate and assess” (Walsh 2016, p. 7) the children’s play and learning, enabling children to explore and consolidate their developing skills while scaffolding, rather than directing the learning or overly structuring the outdoor environment and activities that take place there. This style of hands off being with children in nature – rather than overly structuring the setting or prescribing all the activities which will take place while in nature – forms an integral part of the nature kindergarten program and has been characterised as “naked pedagogy” (Hannan 2016) to connote the absence of the traditional tools and resources of practice (such as blocks, art materials or picture books) and the stronger reliance on interpersonal interaction and flexible responses to the environment. It should be noted that the requirement to plan for the nature program still applies.

The regulatory and pedagogical context of nature kindergarten in Victoria mitigates a number of the issues Leather raises in his critique of Forest Schools in the UK. It is of course important not to overstate the regulatory context as these are safeguards only in so far as the quality standards are being met. The NQS is a quality standard and rating and assessment system, meaning that services rated as “working towards” the standards as opposed to meeting or exceeding them can still operate. It must be acknowledged that there could be cases where services are operating a nature kindergarten but still working towards the standards and elements outlined above. The NQS should be considered a safeguard against the issues which Leather highlights in Forest Schools in the UK rather than a failsafe. Future research might consider the extent to which the arguments made here hold true in nature kindergartens in other states and localities around Australia.

Some services that have developed nature kindergarten programs in Victoria acknowledge influence from Forest Schools in Scandinavia; however such programs in Victoria have not been rolled out in a standardised manner or prescribed by the Department of Education. Currently, it is teaching teams (and sometimes parents) who see value in this pedagogical approach who are driving the spread of these programs. The majority of services offering a nature kindergarten experience in Victoria are not-for-profit, community-managed services (Kids in Nature Network forthcoming). The fact that nature programs are embedded within an existing kindergarten program means there is a great amount of local effort and coordination, as well as planning and engagement with the wider kindergarten community – land owners and managers, the Department of Education and Training (DET) and local Indigenous communities – going into the development of each nature kindergarten program. Nature kindergarten has tended to be something driven by and developed within each service by teaching teams who value outdoor learning and who will ultimately deliver the program, rather than something imposed on the sector or developed by outside consultants or service providers engaged to facilitate an outdoor experience.

Three illustrative vignettes

In this section we present three illustrative vignettes of nature kindergarten programs currently operating in Victoria. Each considers the local and policy contexts which gave rise to their development. Leather (2018) identifies a “Mcdonaldisation” of Forest School practices (Leather 2018, p. 6) in the UK, in which standard activities (fire building, whittling, use of sharp tools, building dens) are emulated outside of their traditional Scandinavian socio-cultural contexts. In order to interrogate this concern in the context of nature kindergartens in Australia, each vignette also considers the extent to which the standardised Forest School practices identified by Leather form part of the program. It is, of course, important to recognise that these vignettes provide an illustrative rather than an exhaustive snapshot of nature kindergartens currently operating in Victoria. They were not chosen as exemplary or best practice examples, though the teams that developed these programs have been instrumental to the emergence of nature kindergarten in Victoria. Instead they were chosen to offer a context for thinking of nature kindergarten as more diverse sites and localised sets of place-based relationships, contrasting with the codified Forest Schools which Leather describes in the UK.

Urban Bush Kinder

In the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, four year old children from a local not-for-profit and community-managed kindergarten have visited Darebin parkland for one day every week since 2012; rain, hail or shine. The same Bush Kinder site is used by the children every week. The site boundaries were originally selected by the teachers. Over time the children have identified other areas with play potential and negotiated expanded site boundaries made up of natural forms including rocks, trees, grassy embankments or reeds at the water’s edge. The Bush Kinder program was developed by a committed teaching team – with awareness of Danish nature kindergartens and UK Forest Schools, as well as Steiner education – and the kindergarten committee of management. The local council supported the idea but had no input into the design or development of the program. The DET met the idea with neutrality, adopting a position that neither supported nor opposed the proposal, instead insisting on a model that was educationally robust and would stand up to the rigours of professional scrutiny and the regulatory system. Rather than emulate the curriculum of Danish nature kindergartens or UK Forest Schools the team that developed the program wanted to create a curriculum that recognised the significance of the land in Aboriginal cultures and the importance of the bush in Australian folklore. Their goal was to develop a curriculum in which children could lead their own play and learning in and with nature – “no toys, no tools, no art supplies” (Fargher 2009, para. 5). While referencing versions of Forest School helped the team to communicate a vision to the families enrolling in the program initially, it did not lead to using the particular practices detailed by Leather (whittling, fire building and using tools). While children do at times build temporary structures (like the dens Leather describes), this is in accordance with the affordances of the site and the inclination of the children rather than a structured activity or skill taught by adults in the program.

The idea to develop a curriculum to provide unstructured time in which children could simply ‘be’ in nature was more a product of a particular point in time for this learning community than a response to the Forest School model. In 2010, the perceived needs of contemporary children for more risk and challenge, as well as increased time in nature – as highlighted by Richard Louv’s (2010) book Last Child in the Woods and the work of Tim Gill (2010) in the UK – were gaining traction among those interested in contemporary childhood and early childhood education; and these ‘calls to action’ influenced the team developing the Bush Kinder concept. The pilot program received letters of support from RMIT University School of Education, Parks Victoria, Play Australia, the Heart Foundation, Environmental Education in Early Childhood (EEEC) and the Australian Association for Environmental Education.

The timing of the pilot program was also influenced by the National Quality Agenda and the requirement for increased hours of kindergarten for four year old children. This national reform had particular implications for kindergartens in Victoria, where there is a strong history of, and community demand for, three year old kindergarten which is provided in the same local infrastructure as four year old programs, despite three year old kindergarten not attracting per capita funding from the DET.Footnote 2 Prior to these reforms four year old programs received per capita funding for all children who received at least 10.75 h of kindergarten per week. The average four year old program was around 12 hours per week and the average kindergarten had two groups of four year olds and one or two groups of three year olds. The three year old programs utilised the kindergarten in the hours available outside of the four year old program times. The new requirement for increased hours for four year olds meant services had to offer an average of 15 hours per week to four year olds during school terms in order to qualify for preschool funding. This requirement reduced the number of hours the classrooms would be available to the three year old programs. The idea of an offsite program offered a way to mitigate this loss of provision for three year olds and directly contributed to the development of Bush Kinder.

The decision to develop the program to be taught by early childhood teachers without specific outdoor qualifications was intentional: the teachers’ broader knowledge of pedagogy and early childhood curriculum was given priority over knowledge targeted at teaching outdoors. The over-arching intention was to develop a program that worked for this context and these particular children, rather than deliver a standardised outdoor program modelled on Forest Schools.

Beach kindergarten

A Beach Kindergarten program on Victoria’s southern coast evolved in response to a number of key observations and pedagogical interrogations by a teacher in a community-managed kindergarten. Visits to Denmark’s nature kindergartens and professional development with Forest School UK practitioners initially influenced the idea of learning in nature, no matter the weather. The observation of Danish educators who deeply trusted children in their risk-taking and decision-making challenged this teacher to consider the level of regulation in Australia and question whether the regulations actually prohibited nature-based programs. A challenge posed during one trip to Denmark to consider the closest natural environment to one’s own kindergarten and note how often it is visited led to the realisation that the beach had not been explored as a potential learning environment, despite its proximity and importance in the lives of the families attending the kindergarten.

Another key driver in the development of the beach program was recognition that Aboriginal people had educated children on and with the land throughout history, and that an authentic connection to place and the local community would require meaningful engagement with the land that made up the immediate surrounds of the kindergarten. The program’s aims were developed to embed the centre philosophy: time to be; connecting with environment and community; developing observation skills; appreciating what nature provides; using nature to create play; and supporting risk taking. The program does not emphasize or explicitly teach the structured Forest School practices Leather describes, instead emphasizing a minimal use of tools. Buckets, binoculars, reference books and a camera are brought to the beach but other tools are only used back at the centre.

Australian First Peoples cultural practices and knowledges have become an important part of the centre’s philosophy and its connection to the local community. For example, storytelling with items found in nature and recognising the significance of animals like Bundjil (the wedge tail eagle) and Waa (the raven) are part of the everyday. Engaging an Aboriginal consultant to work with children, teachers and educators has drawn together Aboriginal elders and the local community, including the local land managers and rangers. The service has won national awards for its innovative approach to reconciliation and collaborative community projects. Given this perspective, standardised outdoor education training is not sought by teachers and educators in this program. Training about First Peoples local knowledges of the local flora and fauna, or skills in working with the particular land managers of the area, are seen as more relevant. Education qualifications that recognise the importance of play-based learning and knowledge of the community and/or First Peoples culture are sought during recruitment, rather than specific outdoor education qualifications. In-service professional development and shared experience and reflection are used to build expertise.

Outdoor learning in nature program

Every Thursday four year olds from an independent school in Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs visit a creek on their campus, come rain or shine. Following teacher visits to a range of outdoor learning settings in Denmark and other independent schools in Australia, this program was developed using principles learned from Scandinavian practitioners. However, rather than a direct emulation of activities, the influences acknowledged as having impact on the development of the nature program are the more practical elements of teaching outdoors, for example the storage of equipment, benefit-risk analysis, and the philosophical and pedagogical elements observed in Denmark: trusting children; supporting risk-taking; supporting language; and scientific education.

The emphasis in this program is on experiential learning as well as child-led and adult-supported exploration. Experiences are site-specific and emphasise risky play (Gill 2010; Stephenson 2003) and self-regulation. They might include sliding down the muddy hill (negotiating turn taking and one’s own safety), jumping in the creek from a fallen tree log (with children negotiating and regulating their game to ensure their own safety, managing turn taking after adults ask questions as to how many people could safely balance on the log, and when it was ok to jump), making mud-balls and throwing at a target (a game developed as a result of a child being hit with a mud ball and staff supporting restorative practice to resolve the issue, the children worked out their own rules, target and way of taking turns and scoring), and jumping from rock to rock and self-regulating when the rocks became muddy and slippery (requiring situation-specific risk assessment with the children).

Learning in this context is supported by educator questioning and provocations that encourage children to trust their own thinking and decision-making. For example, observation of rain drops falling on the water might see the children develop theories about where the rain comes from and why it is sometimes heavy and sometimes light. Children will measure the depth of the water using sticks to check if it is safe to wade in. They problem-solve ways to retrieve sticks that have been dropped into the flowing creek. The emphasis is always on supporting interactions that facilitate collaborative learning and team work.

This program has developed very much within its own geographical context. Unlike the majority of emerging nature kindergarten programs in Victoria this program is part of an independent (non-government) school and the land accessed is private not public land. Nevertheless, the program has led to partnerships with local organisations including the Country Fire Authority, Melbourne Water, park rangers and Landcare groups. In particular, it has developed an added avenue for education on First Peoples that is specific to the school community and its location. The school’s Indigenous studies director (an Aboriginal man) visits regularly to support the exploration of First Peoples culture in the nature program and provides regular opportunities for the children to visit with and participate in incursions with local elders and the local Aboriginal community. While practices like fire building (and its safe management) or construction out of fallen branches and logs can be observed in this program, these are considered by the practitioners to be a result of the partnerships and realities of working with these groups in this particular (Australian) context, rather than an emulation of codified Forest School practices.

Conclusion

Each of the three vignettes presented here identifies specific local conditions and political realities that gave rise to the development of these nature kindergarten programs. While influenced by the possibilities presented by Danish nature pedagogy none of these directly imported or indeed sought to directly implement the Forest School approach as characterised by Leather (2018), and have not adopted predetermined practices, standardised curriculum or specialised training.

Care should be taken not to overstate the enduring influence of regulatory and pedagogical frameworks, or the extent to which these three examples can provide an exhaustive snapshot of the field. However, the three programs described here are influential in and characteristic of the development of nature kindergartens in Victoria, which have emerged independently and organically, driven largely by the teachers and teams that deliver each program. More research to extend our understanding of these programs is warranted. While recognisably part of an international trend, they represent local responses to a range of local, state and national policy and regulatory considerations. They are continually being developed by teachers as an integral part of their interpretation of the national curriculum framework and as part of the core educational provision for preschool children.