Positive experiences about nature can be gained during childhood and transmitted to adulthood (Bento & Dias, 2017). Using outdoor settings in education increase children’s wonder and interest towards nature, develop a sense of connection to nature and their imagination (Carr & Luken, 2014; Cheng & Monroe, 2012). Outdoor education programs are important to develop children’s experiences in nature (Louv, 2008). While many studies indicate the positive impact of outdoor education on children, there are some barriers to use outdoor settings especially cited by teachers such as lack of administrative support, management issues, safety concerns, lack of knowledge and skills (Jose, Patrick &  Moseley, 2017). Because of these concerns early childhood teachers are not willing to take children natural places and apply outdoor activities (Torquati & Ernst, 2013). One of the reasons of this is that early childhood education programs do not train teachers to understand the role of nature on children’s development and how to implement outdoor activities in their classes (Ferreira, Grueber & Yarema, 2012). In Turkey, early childhood teachers have a lack of knowledge and management skills about using outdoor activities in their classrooms (Parlakyıldız & Aydın, 2004). Moreover, the Turkish early childhood education curriculum does not include enough information to implement outdoor activities (Yılmaz, 2016). Early childhood teachers should be given more opportunities to use the natural environment and conduct outdoor activities in their teaching thus, they can increase children’s experiences in nature (Gerrish, 2014). For this reason, it is necessary to develop teachers’ knowledge, perceptions, skills and their experiences to use the outdoor environment in their teaching (Güler, 2009; Güzelyurt & Özkan, 2018). Based on the literature, this study aimed to develop beginning early childhood teachers’ perceptions and experiences regarding outdoor education, specifically using natural materials and the natural environment in their teaching. Experiential learning theory developed by Kolb (1984) framed the research design of this study. According to Kolb, learning occurs in four stages which are experience, reflect, generalize and test. Through one-week education program early childhood teachers attended in fieldworks including environment, science, math and art activities and at the end of the education program, they reflected what they learned by preparing lesson plans and presenting them. It is expected that this study inspires international educators and researchers to allow teachers to develop their perceptions and experiences related to outdoor education and to conduct outdoor environmental, science, maths and art activities with children. The research question leading to this study is: “How do Turkish early childhood teachers’ perceptions and experiences change related to outdoor education after participating in the one-week education program? Sub-questions related to this study are;

• What are the early childhood teachers’ previous knowledge and experiences related to outdoor education?
• How do early childhood teachers describe the changes that have occurred after attending an outdoor education program?
• How do early childhood teachers describe their future intentions to implement outdoor education in their classes?

This study was conducted as a part of one year project supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey in 2018. The project was designed to develop outdoor experiences of early childhood teachers working in the schools. The study embraced a case study method which is an inductive and descriptive strategy including its boundaries (Merriam, 2009). Twenty-four novice teachers (22 female and 2 male) having less than five years of experience and working in fifteen different cities in the east region of Turkey participated in this project. The project was conducted in a public university in the city of Van in Turkey. The east region of Turkey was selected as research site as it is characterized by deprivation in social, education and economic situations. The purpose of selecting novice teachers is to support their professional development and increase the transferability of knowledge that they gain in training program. Teachers attended in the one-week outdoor education program. The training program included 23 outdoor learning activities. These activities included various subjects such as environmental science, geology, mathematics, engineering, and art. These activities were designed to increase the knowledge and skills of early childhood teachers related to outdoor education and also show them how to apply these activities in their classes with children. Several strategies were utilized to conduct outdoor based activities including observation, play, field trip, experiment, drama, and online applications. At the end of the program, teachers also prepared their lesson plans including outdoor activities and presented them. Data were collected qualitatively by implementing open-ended questions to all teachers before and after the education program. Moreover, 10 volunteer participants were interviewed about the program. In order to analyze data themes and categories were created through both inductive and deductive methods. First, pre-determined themes and categories were identified; then, throughout the analysis, emerging categories were added. In order to ensure inter-coder reliability, a second coder examined and coded data independently.

According to the findings of this study, five themes have emerged. These themes are; previous knowledge and experiences related to outdoor education, benefits of outdoor education program, teachers’ future intentions to implement outdoor education, teachers’ perceptions of outdoor education and change in teachers’ self-confidence regarding outdoor education. As the data analysis continues, some emerging results are presented. The results revealed that before the training program teachers mentioned that they had limited experiences related to outdoor education. Only three of them described that they conducted some outdoor activities in science teaching course in their undergraduate program and others mentioned that they did not have any experiences to conduct outdoor education. P-21: I have taken science teaching course in the university but we just made several in-class experiments in that course. Actually, there should be nature related activities in this course. In reality, it mostly focused on theoretical information. After participating to program teachers explained the benefits of outdoor education program on their both personal and professional development. Two categories have emerged; awareness towards nature and knowledge and awareness to teaching outside. Some example quotations are presented below: P-15: My awareness to natural areas increased. I realized that I did not know many things about nature. P-21: I realized that I can create various activities in nature. Furthermore, teachers described their future intentions to implement outdoor education. All of the teachers stated that they are planning to implement outdoor activities in their schools with their children. P-13: I will definitely implement these activities and share with my colleagues. Especially, “ice art” activity was a lot of fun to conduct with children. It could be concluded that with the help of this project early childhood teachers were encouraged to let children go outside and implement more outdoor activities related to curricula subjects.

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