Introduction

Outdoor play spaces for children have been rapidly transforming in recent times [1], from traditional manufactured playgrounds into more nature-based play spaces with a focus on incorporating natural elements and features [2, 3]. The popularity of nature play may be attributed to emerging research that suggests nature play provides children with numerous health and developmental benefits, such as, emotional, physical, learning, and cognitive outcomes [4–6]. The recent evidence linking nature play to health and developmental benefits suggests it may be an important initiative to help promote children’s health [7].

Nature play is a type of outdoor play, that occurs “in a natural environment and/or involves interaction with natural elements and features (e.g., water and mud, rocks, hills, forests, and natural loose parts, such as sticks, pinecones, leaves, and grass)” [8]. Importantly, the overarching definition of play still applies in that play itself is a rewarding and fun activity that is usually (but not always) intrinsically driven/self-directed [8]. Nature play spaces are being implemented within schools, recreational park setting and within early childhood settings, as research suggests that children prefer nature play compared to traditional playgrounds [9–12]. Despite children’s preferences for nature play, opportunities for young children to engage in nature play may be influenced by other people in their lives [13, 14].

Many Australian children are spending a large amount of their time in formal care facilities, such as childcare or pre-school services. In 2011, children aged 2–4 years spent 22 hours per week on average in formal care facilities, with 52% in care 3–5 days per week [15, 16]. As children are spending more time in formal care, outdoor play spaces in early childhood settings may provide an important opportunity to promote play and facilitate health outcomes. Moreover, ECEs may play an important role in enabling children to access outdoor play spaces to meet their needs and facilitate engagement [17–19]. The literature suggests that parents and ECEs may support the shift towards more nature-based play [18, 20].

For instance, Herrington (2008) used focus groups to explore ECE perspectives at 14 centres in British Columbia regarding outdoor play spaces for children, and found 11 positive responses to incorporating plants in the children’s outdoor environment compared to four responses for no plants [18]. In addition to Herrington’s findings, more recent studies have found that parents and ECEs may face challenges when engaging in nature play. A study conducted by Tink and colleagues explored Canadian ECEs, primary school teachers and other service educator perspectives of nature play through interviews and found that other play activities were preferred over nature play [21]. Parents and ECEs perceived nature play as a risky activity with fears of child injuries, and liability being a main deterrent to engaging in nature play [21]. Little and colleagues [22] noted similar findings during semi-structured interviews with mothers of children aged 4–5 years regarding their perspectives of risk taking in outdoor play. Little and colleagues [22] found that while mothers emphasised the benefits of risky unstructured play outside, tensions existed between the desire to provide such play opportunities and fears about child safety. This highlights the complexities underpinning the decision-making process for parents and ECEs when weighing up potential risks versus benefits of nature play engagement.

Whilst Little et al. [22] and other research in different geographical contexts [18, 21] have identified and explored possible factors that influence unstructured nature play uptake, little is known about how parents and ECEs experience and perceive nature play in early childhood settings within a South Australia context. Therefore, this study addressed these knowledge gaps by exploring parents and ECEs perspectives of nature play adopting a qualitative descriptive methodology to gain a rich and detailed understanding about nature play experiences within an early childhood setting.

Methods

Results

Recruitment yielded interest from 27 ECEs and 29 parents. Of these, 18 ECEs and 13 parents consented to take part in the semi-structured interviews. Of the ECEs who did not participate, 9 did not respond and 1 declined. Of the parents who did not participate, 15 did not respond and 1 declined. Thematic analysis of the interview data identified five main themes; (1) positive affirmations of nature play, (2) factors influencing nature play engagement, (3) defining nature play, (4) outdoor play space design preferences, and (5) risky play. Sub themes were also generated from each of the main themes. A diagrammatic overview of the themes and sub-themes is shown in Fig 1.

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Fig 1. Diagrammatic overview of themes and sub-themes.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286468.g001

Table 1 provides an overview of the demographic characteristics of participants. Table 1 indicates that majority of the participants were female and born in Australia, with most parents completing an undergraduate degree compared to majority of ECE’s whom completed a diploma with 4–7 years’ experience as an ECE.

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Table 1. Demographic characteristics of parents, Early Childhood Educators (ECE) and their centres.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286468.t001

Discussion

Research investigating the importance of nature play for young children has been steadily increasing [4], as countries including the USA [41, 42], Norway [11, 43], the United Kingdom [44], Canada [7], Scotland [45] and Australia [2, 44] are reporting on the numerous health and developmental benefits associated with the nature based re-design of children’s paly spaces. Despite the increasing uptake of nature play in early childhood settings [1], it is unclear what influences the application of nature play from the perspectives of nature play stakeholders, such as parents and ECEs. Parents and ECEs are important facilitators of nature play, and the qualitative descriptive methods utilised in this study allowed for in-depth exploration of their valuable perspectives. The contribution of this research is novel, as it is the first study to explore the perspectives of unstructured nature play for parents and ECEs within a South Australian context, with a focus on young children in early childhood settings. In contrast, previous research such as Miller and colleagues [3], has focused on the perspectives of parents/educators of primary-school children or out of school hours care (OSHC) [21]. Focussing on different ages, stakeholders and contexts adds to the literature in several ways. First, it contributes new knowledge in terms of how children of different ages engage with unstructured nature play. This is critical as it may be useful in informing strategies to promote nature play for different age groups. Second, exploring and understanding different stakeholders’ perspectives about nature play may assist in informing policies and practices which can promote enabling factors and mitigate challenges to nature play engagement. Finally, given the diversity of contexts and environments in which nature play can occur, it is important to understand how and what role contexts play in promoting nature play.

The findings of the present study provide insight into the complexities underpinning how parents and ECEs navigate nature play engagement within early childhood settings, which was closely linked to their perceptions and experiences with nature play. Parents and ECEs described that they encouraged nature play engagement because they believed it to be good for children, thus having positive affirmations about nature play influenced their decisions to engage with it. In line with current research [4], parents and ECE’s consistently described their view that nature play was important for young children’s health and development in terms of the physical, social, learning, emotional, and cognitive benefits. Notably, parents and ECEs described that nature play helps support children’s emotional regulation, noting that children were a lot calmer and happier after playing in nature, which is consistent with current evidence [4, 5, 46].

In addition to health and developmental benefits described by parents and ECEs, they also identified how engaging in nature play activities can foster children’s connection to the natural world, which may result in children developing positive attitudes towards sustainable practices in the future. A recent systematic review conducted by Ernst and colleagues [47] which consolidated the findings from 32 quantitative and qualitative studies found, children aged 3–5 years who participated in a nature play program at their early childhood setting improved their knowledge about plants, wildlife, living things, and established compassionate care for nature, as measured by observations, qualitative interviews, and questionnaires [47]. The findings from Ernst and colleagues [47] align with the findings from this study and taken together highlight the importance of nature play as a valid contributor to sustainability outcomes for children and the natural environment [47].

Parents and ECEs described how the bespoke natural environment that nature play settings provide may be a haven away from the emerging influence of technology and screen use, as parents described that nature play could be promoted as a way of offsetting technology and screen time for young children. Increased sedentary screen time use has been linked to a higher risk of obesity and mental health issues for young children [48], as time spent on screens may replace time spent engaging in activities that have been shown to benefit children’s health and development, such as PA [49] and outdoor play [50, 51]. Investing in strategies aimed at increasing PA and outdoor play, such as nature play, may act to inhibit screen time use for young children. Thus, future research examining the effectiveness of nature play to offset screen use may be warranted.

Defining nature play was identified as a main theme in influencing parents and ECEs delivery of nature play, as participants consistently described being confused about what nature play is. This notion is consistent with current evidence, as semi-structured interviews conducted by Miller and colleagues [3] also found that educator knowledge about nature-based learning were key barriers for 12 South Australian primary school teachers and principals. The lack of consensus on what constitutes nature play in the literature may have contributed to this knowledge gap. However, since the recent works by Lee and colleagues in 2022 have addressed consensus on how nature based-learning, nature play and other play definitions are defined, confusion for educators may be alleviated by presenting them with these findings [8]. Whilst nature-based learning is a structured activity that takes place in an educational setting, there were similarities between primary school teachers and ECE perspectives, along with sector/context-based differences. These similarities may be attributed to the lack of knowledge about nature play, which was shared by parents and ECEs alike, similar to the findings of Miller and colleagues [3]. For some parents and ECEs, nature play was simply defined as being outdoors, whilst some described it as needing to be within a natural environment with only natural materials, with others describing that nature play could be indoors or outdoors. It was evident that both parents and ECEs shared in their confusion about what nature play is and what its parameters are. Such uncertainty may not be a feature in the future, as recent research by Lee and colleagues outlines a consensus-based definition of nature play [8]. Leveraging from such research, it may be important to provide additional resources to parents and offer specialised training to ECEs about nature play definitions, principles and resources that can be adopted. Previous research by Busoni and colleagues [52, 53] conducted in Canada found that, providing parents and ECEs with additional training and resources, such as web based, and in-person workshops increases their tolerance in delivering and facilitating risky play. Whilst these findings are encouraging, future research may be able to adopt the methods utilised by Brussoni and colleagues [52, 53] to develop and evaluate specific nature play training and resources.

In addition to the ambiguity surrounding what constitutes a nature play space, ECEs mentioned that they need guidance on how to use natural resources and where to source them. Parents and ECEs also agreed that children may need extra support and guidance too, especially those who are shy and more reserved. Thus, it may not be enough to simply provide a natural environment and expect children to engage with it, there may need to be more thought around the affordances and the need for scaffolding of play experiences for some children. Play affordances have been explored by psychologist Gibson [54] and this theory has been established as an important framework to consider when designing play spaces and activities for children. In line with the descriptions made by parents and ECEs in this study, the theory is built on the notion that affordances are unique to the individual and unique to different objects and environments. For example, a tree may not afford climbing to an infant, but a tree with a straight, thick branch may afford an older child to climb on it [54, 55]. Whilst this notion was shared by parents and ECEs alike, that nature play spaces need to be age appropriate, a more viable approach would be to provide a variety of nature components with a nature play space so children of different ages can explore their own affordances and abilities.

Weather and temperature were identified as a main barrier to nature play engagement for both parents and ECEs. This barrier is also shared by other parents and ECEs within different geographical contexts and sectors. Miller and colleagues [3] explored perspectives of teachers and principals with a South Australian primary school context, which found that inclement weather can disrupt plans to engage in nature-based learning outside the classroom, such as extreme heat in summer and cold weather in winter. Similarly, Basbay and Atmaca [56] explored the perspectives of parents and educators in a Turkish forest school for children of primary school age and found that extreme snow conditions made it difficult to plan outdoor curricula [56]. Interestingly, a common practice in Finland is allowing young babies up to the age of 2 years old to sleep outside in the wintertime in temperatures ranging from minus 6 to minus 15 [57]. Parents who participated in this practice were interviewed and surveyed about their experiences and opinions, and the study found that parent’s experiences were mainly positive and most parents had not faced potentially dangerous situations [57]. One third of the parents surveyed agreed that this practice helped aided to toughen up their child, and prepare them for cooler conditions in the future [57]. Similarly, this study found that a small number of parents and ECEs agreed with this notion that being outdoors helps to toughen up children but did not reference harsh weather conditions as a way to achieve this. This may be due to the fact that the South Australian climate is very different to that of Finland, and in Australia the ultraviolet (UV) radiation is higher compared to other countries and prolonged UV exposure can be linked to developing skin cancer [58], of which Australia has the highest incidence worldwide [59, 60].

In South Australia, the Sun Smart Early Childhood Policy Guidelines state that when the UV is over 3, children need to seek shade, wear hats, protective clothing and sunscreen to play outside [61]. Parents and ECEs in this study discussed how this UV exposure risk could be mitigated when children play outdoors and described that more shaded areas are needed, which may come from trees or built shaded structures. The ECEs often identified that their centres do not have adequate shade outside and as a result could not allow children to be outdoors when the UV was high, but they described ways they mitigate this by taking children out in the morning when the UV is at its lowest compared to the middle of the day. This may require additional planning by ECEs, thus support from within the institution itself may be needed to create weather contingency plans that can be easily incorporated into the daily schedule. In addition to the institutional support, existing play spaces may require structural upgrades such as shade sales or availability of appropriate wet weather gear/protective clothing for children to use during inclement weather. In response to this, ECEs discussed that they often try to bring nature play indoors by building make-shift sand pits and colleting loose parts such as bark, leaves, sticks and rocks. Despite this, some ECEs described that bringing nature play indoors may require more cleaning and thus some ECEs were reluctant to do this.

Parents and ECE’s were asked about risky play, due to the similarities shared by nature play and risky play within the literature [62]. International members of PlaTO (play, learn, and teach outdoors) established consensus on how risky play can be defined, as a form of play that is thrilling and exciting, which involves uncertainty, unpredictability, and varying degrees of risk-taking [8]. Additionally, risky play can be characterised as children engaging in activities such climbing (trees and climbing towers), climbing up and jumping down from big rocks or small cliffs, balancing on stones or windfallen trees, shooting with bows and arrows, whittling with knives, fencing with sticks and children venturing out on their own [63, 64]. Similarly, characteristics of risky play were also described by participants when defining nature play, such as climbing trees, balancing on logs and children exploring their own capabilities. Parents and ECEs alike described risky play as being important for children; they each supported risky play and detailed how it helps children problem solve, learn their own limits and build confidence whilst giving them a sense of agency over their play. However, parents and ECEs alike described that they had safety concerns when it comes to climbing on tall structures or playing near bodies of water and there needs to be a balance between having opportunities for risky play and mitigating the risks. Similar to the finding of this study, a study by McFarland and Laird [17] found that ECEs from the USA did not encourage risky play, nor did they value it due to litigation concerns; these concerns were shared by some ECEs in this study also. Similar to the findings of Tink and colleagues [21] whom interviewed 21 Canadian educators, parents and ECEs emphasised that risky play should be age appropriate, meaning that ECEs should have an understanding about the individual child’s abilities before encouraging risky play [21]. This poses a unique challenge for ECEs, especially when staff members are casually employed and may not have enough exposure to the children to ascertain their individual abilities or have the proper training and skills necessary to assess this. It may be important for ECEs to have additional training on the perceived risk versus actual risk within their working play space, as well as what is developmentally appropriate for the age of the children.

In order for children to access and engage in nature play activities, the barriers need to be mitigated and the enablers need to be supported. One key barrier for parents and ECEs alike were that nature play activities may require more maintenance and time to pack up, creating more mess than other play activities and was identified as a key barrier. Parents and ECEs described that this barrier may be overcome by bringing a change of clothes or providing wet weather gear for the children to change into such as gum boots. Therefore, a key enabler for both parents and ECEs may be having additional facilities and equipment to help reduce clean up time; this was found to be important to educators and parents of children attending forest schools in Turkey [56]. Basbay and Atmaca [56] conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 6 parents and 4 educators; they found that appropriate and sufficient equipment increased the joy and productivity of time spent in the forest, including appropriate footwear and waterproof clothes [56].

Strengths and limitations

The strengths of this study can be attributed to the rigorous methods employed, relating to study design, sample representation and credibility. The qualitative descriptive methodology employed in the research allowed for information rich data to be collected, which allows the data to stay true to the participants point of view. By collecting data from both parents and ECEs, the phenomenon of nature play could be explored in more depth and breadth, which demonstrated credibility. Similarly, whilst there is no agreed upon or ideal sample size in qualitative research, the larger sample size of both groups in this study relative to similar studies is notable. In addition, the sample for both groups displayed a diversity of demographic characteristics, which highlights the transferability of the results across different socio-economic and South Australian contexts. Despite the strengths attached to this study there were also limitations. It is possible that using the purposive sampling method proposed that participants who had past knowledge of nature play were more likely to participate due to already having positive attitudes towards nature play. However, purposive sampling selects participants who have a story to tell, where the focus is on the phenomena of interest rather than aiming to offer a representative sample, or to draw inferences to the population (which is not the focus of qualitative research) [28]. In addition, purposive sampling allows for divergent participant perspectives [29] and we achieved this by inviting all ECEs employed at each of the study sites or parents with children attending the study sites.

Implications for future research and practice

The findings from this study may have implications for parents, ECEs, policy makers, health, and research professionals. Based on the insights from parents and ECEs, it may be beneficial to encourage and facilitate children to engage in outdoor play spaces which have a variety of features and elements available. In particular, play spaces that have natural elements such as trees, plants, rocks, and water to afford nature play and its associated health and developmental benefits. This may be achieved by government bodies engaging with local communities by facilitating/supporting nature play events, providing resources to families about the benefits of nature play for young children or how to find nature play areas nearby, engaging with councils and early childcare facilities to implement nature play spaces locally. For children and parents to engage in nature play areas at their local early childhood setting, ECEs need to have access to these facilities, resources and support from within their institutions, government agencies and organisational leadership/management. This may involve upgrades of play spaces to include more sheltered areas to mitigate weather barriers, access to nature play resources and materials as well as supplying specialised training for professional development to direct the use of nature play spaces for child benefit. Future research may focus on developing an early childhood nature play program/curriculum for ECEs to implement within their early childhood setting. The program could include training and resources that aim to develop ECE knowledge about the benefits of nature play, creating resources for parents, nature play pedagogical skill workshops and management of nature play resources/spaces. Additionally, future research may benefit from implementing, and evaluating the effectiveness of the program within early childhood settings, in terms of measuring ECE/parent knowledge about nature play and child health outcomes.

Conclusion

Exploring the perspectives of nature play for parents and ECEs within a South Australian context has provided important insights into the barriers and enablers of nature play engagement for young children. Adults may be considered gatekeepers to play and inherently restrict or facilitate children’s access to nature play spaces. There is a plethora of factors that impact these choices for parents and ECEs such as time, resourcing, weather, proximity, completing child interests and concerns around safety. These factors may be influenced by parent and ECEs personal experiences with nature play, knowledge about nature play and positive affirmations about nature play. Parents and ECEs may be more inclined to facilitate nature play engagement if they are provided with nature play resources and guidance on how to use those resources. ECE’s may need additional institutional support to ensure consistent training and knowledge about nature play is delivered.

Supporting information