Presentations at the Child Nature Network International Conference

Dr. Kool was awarded an Internal Grant for Research for a project that examined nature-based early childhood education programs, this preliminary analysis was presented at conference.

In the first of these two presentations, Dr. Enid Elliot and I will examine issues around the concept of ‘best practice’. During the current development of nature-based early childhood education (i.e. preschool and kindergartens), there seems to be an attempt to sell educational products under the rubric of being ‘best practice’, products that take no notice of local history, local relationships, local places.
We will also be presenting a preliminary analysis of two case studies of nature kindergarten innovations, one in Sooke and the other in Victoria. There is an instructive set of differences in how these programs were conceptualize, developed and implemented, and while one continues to thrive, the other disappeared after two years.