Nature Talks: Outdoor play may enhance children's language development

The research study, "Language use in indoor and outdoor settings among children in a nature-based preschool" by Ekaterina Novikova, Annette Pic, and Myae Han was published this August in the Environmental Education Research Journal. I spoke with the lead author to get her thoughts on this study's findings and its implications for educators.

Passionate about outdoor learning, Ekaterina Novikova, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, sought to explore the relationship between outdoor nature based settings and young children's language use with an additional focus on dual-language learners. The current study developed out of her experiences teaching English as a Second Language and her interest in outdoor classrooms. She said that when beginning her PhD journey she "learned about nature-based education, which made [her] wonder whether vast outdoor spaces and the abundance of loose parts in the outdoor settings would foster child language," and the idea for this study emerged.

Although outdoor learning and nature based classrooms are becoming more widely available and studies have shown a multitude of benefits to experiences in nature, there is limited research on how these settings support young children's language development. This study provides an important step towards identifying trends and adding to the body of knowledge in early childhood education.

The authors begin by sharing previous research in this area, highlighting how children's oral language skills are a key but often overlooked area of development, "Early oral language skills have both a direct and indirect impact on the transition to school and provide the necessary foundation for later reading and literacy development (NICHD 2005; Storch and Whitehurst 2002). Outdoor nature settings present rich conversational opportunities for children, which prompts examination of the connection between setting and child language use," (Novikova et al., 2023).

This line of research may be particularly important to dual-language learners (DLLs) and when I spoke to Ekaterina, she shared that the lack of evidence for this important area was what surprised her the most, "When going through the literature, I found very little research on Dual Language Learners (DLLs) and nature settings. With the population of DLL students growing in the U.S., it is important to explore what factors can contribute to DLL language use and development, and exposure to nature could be one of them." Working internationally, I know firsthand how valuable and how limited information on dual-language learners can be. I'm loving that this study seeks to add to our knowledge base for this key area.

 In regards to research on the impact of nature on children's language development, the authors shared several recent studies that show promise; identifying studies that show children speak more, play longer, and display enhanced language and literacy skills when immersed in nature.

The current study took place in a nature-based preschool with a class of 16 children from ages 36-60 months. Seven of the children were identified as dual-language learners. The team gathered 30 minute video observations of each child during free play in both the indoor classroom setting and the outdoor classroom setting. They transcribed the recordings to allow them to process the data of children's spoken language to evaluate syntactic complexity (how long their sentences were),  lexical diversity (how many different types of words they used in sentences), and conversation participation (how many words did they use in the conversation compared to how many turns they had).

The authors found that although the conversation participation and lexical diversity were not impacted by the change in setting, children scored higher on measure of syntactic complexity when observed in the outdoor classroom compared to the indoor classroom. This effect was even more pronounced in DLL children. Though unable to reach statistical significance on all measure, the authors highlight that "descriptive data showed higher means on the total number of words, total number of utterances, and number of different words in the outdoor nature setting. We also found the number of different words to be higher in the outdoor nature setting for the sample of DLLs, indicating a possible benefit for vocabulary richness when exposed to nature and calling for further research on the effect of setting on lexical diversity for DLL children." (Novikova et al., 2023). When I asked Ekaterina about the findings, she shared that despite the small sample size, "studies such as ours that show trends towards significance of exposure to outdoor nature settings for child language use give other researchers a sign that this question should be further investigated," and I couldn't agree more. A larger study on children's language use outdoors versus indoors would be fantastic to see.

In the discussion of the study's results, the authors suggest that, "There might be various reasons why children used longer utterances in the outdoor nature setting. Vast outdoor spaces and the abundance of loose parts such as leaves, twigs, and planks reduce the necessity to compete for limited space or for play materials, allowing children to concentrate on the elements of play, play roles, and use of play items and engage in conversation with their peers," (Novikova et al., 2023).

We may not yet have all the information about how nature affects children's development, but we certainly have too much evidence to ignore. For practitioners, Ekaterina shared her top three recommendations from this study:

1. If possible, seek opportunities for outdoor nature play

2. Notice and reflect on how children in your classroom use language in different settings

3. Encourage caregivers to spend time outdoors with their children

For me, bringing attention to this developing area of research allows us to reevaluate what we know- and don't know- about children's language development. This would also be easy to try in your own setting- listen to children's play indoors versus outdoors and see if you and your team can notice any themes and any differences. You don't have to have access to fancy software to give this a try, your observations and documentation are more powerful to your practice than you might expect!

You can find paid or institutional access to the full article here.

References:

Ekaterina Novikova, Annette Pic & Myae Han (2023): Language use in indoor and outdoor settings among children in a nature-based preschool, Environmental Education Research, DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2023.2246688

Nerdy notes about references: I use always use APA style in my writing and most of the time I put references in APA 7 as well- unless the piece already has an author suggested citation printed on the cover page in which case I use that.