Listening in: Spontaneous Teacher Talk on Playscapes

Nature-based playgrounds—known as playscapes—offer numerous opportunities for young children to learn about nature. In the current study, we focus on teacher talk on playscapes, namely to capture the spontaneous utterances teachers offer when engaging with young children during playscape visits. Two different playscapes were contrasted, both of which featured loose parts, native plants, and running water. The difference in playscape was whether it featured ecosystems: While the rural playscape had a natural forest and a wetland, the urban playscape had a man-made stream and a garden. Ten preschool teachers participated with their classrooms. They wore microphones during a series of field trips to playscapes. No specific training was provided, and teachers were told to interact with children as they naturally would. Teacher audio was transcribed and coded to capture science-relevant, science-neutral, science-diverting, and supervisory teacher talk. Findings were analyzed by playscape and number of visits. Results show a strong effect of playscape type: Spontaneously occurring science-relevant utterances were about twice as likely on the rural as the urban playscape, even by the same teacher. In contrast, the amount of supervisory utterances differed only by teacher, not playscape. Finally, science-diverting utterances were very rare, underscoring the opportunities for science learning that lie in playscapes. Our findings have important implications for how to design professional-development tool to support teachers in the delivery of early environmental education.