As the National Centre for Outdoor Play, Learning and Wellbeing, Early Childhood Outdoors is active in encouraging and guiding outdoor play research in the UK. 

Forming links with universities and other academic institutions in all four countries of the UK, we aim to find mechanisms for sharing the knowledge that is being generated through their post-graduate and post-doctorate research, and to make research findings available for practitioners to apply in developing provision and practice outdoors.

An emphasis for Early Childhood Outdoors is researchful practice and practice-based research – and there are very many questions yet to be explored regarding young children in the outdoors!  We’ll pose questions to encourage a wider range of research at all levels - from dissertations to funded studies, initiate and support communities of practice projects, and encourage outdoor focused practitioner research at early years conferences such as BECERA.