Introduction

In the past 50 years, there has been a growing movement of nature-based approaches to early childhood education and care (ECEC). These sites such as forest or nature kindergartens give educators opportunities to foster children’s knowledge of the environment (Knight, 2016). In Australia, the nature-based approach to ECEC was supported by the creation of an Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) in 2009 (DEEWR, 2009) that was further updated in 2022 (AGDE, 2022). The creation of the EYLF provided the impetus for a group of educators in Melbourne, Victoria, to create a ‘bush kinder’, an education context where 4- to 5-year-old preschool children can experience and learn in natural environments through their play (Elliott & Chancellor, 2014). As greater numbers of educators began to understand the benefit of learning in and from nature, considerable growth in bush kinder numbers has transpired (ECOLN, n.d.). Recent research into bush kinders has highlighted them as important contributors to children building their STEM understandings (Speldewinde, 2022b). These forms of nature-based spaces have also been found to improve children’s physical and mental well-being and association with nature (Tiplady & Menter, 2020). When children venture into a bush kinder setting, often the toys, balls, art supplies, and play equipment that may be prevalent in traditional Australian kindergarten premises are absent and children must rely on only what is available in nature to play (Christiansen et al., 2018). This play-based (Edwards et al., 2017) or playful learning (Guarrella et al., 2022) that can occur in bush kinders has been found to provide children with the chance to develop their understandings of the world around them. It is therefore important for educators to provide opportunities to engage with technology, designing and producing familiar objects, services, or environments (Speldewinde & Campbell, 2023). Once these natural outdoor environments, that include trees, creeks, tracks and undulating grassed areas often found in bush kinders, are understood as pedagogical spaces, opportunities abound for the enhancement of younger children’s play, learning, and development (Cutter-Makenzie-Knowles et al., 2021).

From birth, children are investigators of the world around them. Their curiosity of the natural world acts to enable them to holistically develop understandings of their surroundings (Worch et al., 2022). ECEC itself is often approached holistically with learning regularly incorporating socialising and care as central tenets of educator programming (Fox-Turnbull, 2019). Often children’s play in bush kinder involves them needing to apply technology to problem solve and achieve desired outcomes yet, this can be easily overlooked by educators (Speldewinde & Campbell, 2023). The existing literature affirms the technological literacy of many young children which can be nurtured through ‘technological play’ (Preston, 2021, p. 170) that supports problem-solving. For the purposes of this paper, we define technology as the solution-creating approaches adopted by humans to meet their needs and improve their lives (Albion et al. 2018). Australian technology education curriculum itself refers to both the design and digital technologies (ACARA, 2021) and both streams of technology are influential in society. These forms of technology education are often positioned within a range of specific, identified contexts including engineering, systems, food and materials production, and technologies specialisation (Albion et al., 2018).

Empirical research undertaken in bush kinder settings remains in an emergent phase (Speldewinde et al., 2021). During this research project, it became apparent that educators need further opportunities to deepen their understanding of how to not only teach technology in bush kinders (Speldewinde & Campbell, 2023) but to assess children’s technology learning development. Taking on the guise of a participant observer, a central tenet to the ethnographic methodology applied during this research, author one (Speldewinde, 2022a, b) spent time with the children seeking examples of their technology learning whilst also supporting and assessing the children’s technology learning that he observed. Through a novel approach to the teaching and learning of technology in the developing context of bush kinders, this paper seeks to add to the scholarship that focuses on assessment for learning in ECEC settings through the lens of technology education. The connection between science and technology has been made elsewhere (Albion et al., 2022) and integrated STEM teaching and learning is often apparent in bush kinders (Speldewinde, 2022b). These connections involving technology learning make it an important focus as children’s application of technology forms part of curriculum across later levels of primary and secondary Australian children’s schooling (Albion et al., 2018).

One innovative way to understand how teaching and learning has developed, now bush kinders are becoming established as a ‘place’ of early childhood education, is to apply a skills-based assessment model to examples of technology teaching and learning in bush kinders. This paper therefore aims to respond to the research question of, ‘How can the teaching and learning of technology in early childhood nature-based education be assessed using skills-based assessment techniques?’ The paper’s intent is to build deeper knowledge of what is available to educators to assess when children learn about how technology can be applied in nature. Understanding how young children consider and engage in a nature-based setting such as bush kinders with the technological tools available around them, through the influence of educators and a nature pedagogy (Warden, 2015) within the setting, informs the discussions here.

Bush Kinders and Nature Pedagogy

Although it has a long history of education in the outdoors, a new approach to nature-based ECEC gained momentum in Australia in the early to mid-2010s when a small number of ‘bush kinders’ formed. Contextually, bush kinders are an approach to nature-based ECEC education with Australian conditions in mind (Cumming & Nash, 2015). These bush kinders, influenced by the forest school approach to ECEC nature-based education, have been found to occur in urban, peri-urban, and rural settings (ECOLN, n.d.) that include green spaces (Barrable & Barrable, 2022) such as wooded parklands (sometimes called ‘the bush’ in Australian contexts), open fields, paddocks, and public reserves. They can also occur in blue spaces (Barrable & Barrable, 2022) such as beaches or coastal environments. Designed for 3- to 5-year-old children who are at the pre-primary stage of their schooling, bush kinders remain in a growth phase as government and regulatory body policy makers realise the benefits associated with taking children back to nature (Victorian Government, 2023).

Occurring in almost all-weather conditions, bush kinder sessions often are only postponed if high temperatures or strong storms are anticipated (Speldewinde et al.,, 2021). In the Australian context, partially due to their emergent status, bush kinders are not constrained by the regulatory and curriculum constraints of, for example, UK forest schools (Leather, 2018). With a grounding in Australian cultural traditions of outdoor learning, bush kinders provide physical outdoor learning spaces as well as the affordances and opportunities that are available for teaching and learning (Christiansen et al., 2018). Previous bush kinder research (Speldewinde et al., , 2020) highlights the range of pedagogical approaches that guides educators’ practice. Educators apply a nature pedagogy to the teaching and learning is prevalent in bush kinder that enables educators to teach children about the natural world around them (Warden, 2015).

Accessible nature spaces provide opportunities for play through which children can reconnect with nature in urban settings (Kaplan et al., 1989). Nature-based learning or ‘nature pedagogy’ is available to educators to provide children with opportunities to observe the ‘natural methods and practice of working with nature (and how they) that sit within a set of values’ (Warden, 2015, p. 35). Nature pedagogy is according to McLeod (2019, p. 181), an ‘embodied cultural approach to that is part of daily living and early childhood education’. Central to nature pedagogy is ‘a child-centred humanistic approach to learning and development’ (McLeod, 2019, p. 181). Often underlying nature pedagogy is the educator’s own preferred approach to bush kinder teaching and learning which has been observed to range from child-led discovery to teacher-guided to teacher-led (Speldewinde et al., 2020). Like McLeod’s account of nature pedagogy in Denmark, educators in Australian bush kinders have been observed to adopt a pedagogy that provides children with discovery-based, child-led activities in nature that lead to scaffolding of learning opportunities (Speldewinde et al.,, 2020). For example, tree climbing can lead to a discussion about gravity, or a wet and windy day can lead to a conversation about the weather, or a stick fallen from a tree can be used for writing words or drawing geometric shapes in the bare earth. As a learning context in which nature pedagogy can be applied, bush kinders provide an abundance of learning about plants, small animals, the landscape, and natural materials so educators can apply pedagogy to build children’s development of understandings of STEM skills and content knowledge (Speldewinde, 2022b).

Design Technology and Technology Education in Nature

Technology, as one component of STEM, has been described as an activity through which humans meet their needs by changing the world around them (Albion et al., 2022). Yet it can be challenging for us to understand the connections between technology and humans (Johansson, 2021). In this paper, we deviate from what is often categorised as technology and how we apply technology. When discussing technology, it is often generalised to mean digital technology such as tablets and computer-based systems (Albion et al., 2022). To elaborate, ‘technology is more about process than product—it is the approach that humans take to meeting their needs and improve their lives by creating solutions, more than the actual solutions themselves’ (Albion et al.,, 2022, p. 12). Technology has been shown elsewhere to be something as simple as a stick (Speldewinde & Campbell, 2023) and here we consider technology in its simplest of forms. Technology education more broadly can therefore be applied to improve human living situations, yet it can be more multi-layered. It can encompass deepening understandings of how an object, a system, or a process that results in the modification of the natural world to meet human needs and wants (DeVries, 2005 in Johansson, 2021). Technology education often involves students designing, developing, and evaluating technological outcomes (Mawson, 2014). The learning contexts are often authentic and real life and involve problem-solving.

Technology education that provides access to real-life problems is recognised in several jurisdictions as important in early childhood curriculum. For example, it is prevalent in New Zealand and Sweden (Fox-Turnbull, 2019; Mawson, 2014). In the Swedish preschool curriculum, technology education is described as important for providing children with opportunities to build knowledge ‘of how the different choices people make can contribute to sustainable development’ (Johansson, 2021, p. 887). However, in Australian early childhood education, there is little attention paid to technology education within curriculum documents. Yet, important connections have been shown to exist between nature pedagogy, play-based learning, and technology education (Speldewinde & Campbell, 2023). Australian educators have been observed to plan for and support children’s technology learning whilst applying sticks as writing implements, as levers to move loose materials and for building purposes, all during nature play (Speldewinde & Campbell, 2023). The key Australian curriculum document, the EYLF has embedded within its five learning outcomes limited consideration of technology and it is often focussed on digital technologies. Where it is evident is in EYLF Outcome 4, ‘Children are confident and involved learners’. This outcome states that ‘Children resource their own learning through connecting with people, place, technologies and natural and processed materials’ and more specifically that educators ‘select and introduce appropriate tools, technologies and media and provide the skills, knowledge and techniques to enhance children’s learning’ which can be evidenced by children who can ‘experiment with different technologies’ (AGDE, 2022, p. 56). With scant attention to developing children’s technology knowledge at a young age, it creates a challenge for educators to be able to fully appreciate how children are growing their understandings of this learning area.

Science Process Skills in Technology Education and Assessing Play-Based Learning

Past research has conflated science and technology skills together. Anagün and Yasar (2009) examined how scientific process skills were implementable in a grade five science and technology teaching program. Their study found that science skills such as observing, comparing, classifying, predicting, and collecting data were as applicable in the technology classroom as the science classroom. Science process skills have been found to be valuable for children’s investigations (Juhji & Nuangchalerm, 2020). Importantly, for the development of technology understandings, process skills support problem-solving, production of design briefs, investigation skills, and evaluation and decision-making (Makgoto, 2011).

These ‘process’ skills such as investigating and problem-solving, that is the skills which Albion and colleagues (2022, p. 108) have determined are required for the creation of designed technological solutions, form part of an iterative process, one where children can move back and forth through the process, adjusting and modifying their thinking as they progress. Atmojo (2012) indicates that process skills allow children to build a sense of self as their intellectual, physical, and sociality develops. Assessment of children’s learning plays an important role in the planning cycle proposed under Australia’s EYLF (DEEWR, 2009). The EYLF provides educators with a model for planning for children’s learning (AGDE, 2022). The planning cycle incorporates five components, observe, assess, plan, implement, and evaluate. Of relevance to this paper’s focus on assessing young children’s learning is the ‘evaluate phase’ of the cycle through which ‘educators use their assessment of, as and for children’s learning to evaluate the implementation of plans’ (p. 28). The EYLF supports educators’ considerations of assessment, posing reflection questions that include: ‘“What worked well and why?”, “What will I do differently next time?” and “How can I further extend children’s learning?”’ The EYLF’s planning cycle challenges educators to reflect critically on children’s learning and the possibilities for future forward planning. Also embedded within the EYLF planning cycle, educators are encouraged to consider how child-led play can foster learning and how playfulness is an important part of educator planning.

Over time, as part of educator planning, there have been several frameworks proposed for categorising assessment and educational goals. Bloom’s taxonomy is an oft-cited example that Wong et al. (2015, p. 80) suggest ‘demonstrates the relationship between overarching educational objectives and the knowledge required to achieve those objectives’. With Bloom’s work as a consideration, Wong and colleagues developed a taxonomy specific to early childhood educators, one that codifies a system for assessing ECEC educators’ daily work tasks, activities, and actions. Their system incorporates ways of considering the learning outcomes of discipline-based learning such as science, literacy, and numeracy. Recently, Guarrella et al. (2022) proposed a cyclical model for assessing science learning in play-based learning situations. Playful learning, according to these authors, involves children actively engaging in play that leads to the development of new knowledge, skills, and understandings. To understand the children’s play, educators intentionally observe the interactions. Child directed, discovery play is often at the centre of bush kinder pedagogy (Speldewinde et al., 2020) and is likewise at the centre playful learning (Guarrella et al., 2022) which ‘create opportunities for educators to enact their professional judgment in support of developing the children’s knowledge, skills, and interests. This requires the teacher to step into play to support child learning at times when needed, rather than only following the child’s direction without intervention’ (p. 612). The playful learning assessment model proposed by Guarrella et al. (2022), which can be applied in settings with both small and large groups of children, comprises five components. Commencing with children’s playful learning, educators can intentionally observe children at play to understand their needs and interests within an educator-selected area of learning. Then, educators can purposely collect and gather information which enables them to comprehend the skills children are learning so that learning progressions can be classified. With an awareness of learning progressions to be achieved, educators can assess children’s capabilities and identify their interests. Selecting contingent learning aims aligning with what has been assessed as the child’s capabilities and preparing a teaching and learning environment that is informed by the children’s capabilities and interests constitute the next two steps of the cycle. Leading to playful learning, the remaining four components of the cycle as summarised in Fig. 1 ‘feed back into the cycle of assessment for playful learning’ (p. 636).

Fig. 1
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Playful learning assessment model as adapted from Guarrella et al. (2022)

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Methodology

This paper reports on findings that draw on data gathered during a longitudinal project. The project applies an ethnographic design (Delamont, 2016; Madden, 2012) to examine how educators’ pedagogical positioning of STEM teaching and learning occurs in bush kinders. Through further interpretation of the data, we came to consider not only the integrated STEM content knowledge being applied but also the technological tools the children were applying to learn about nature and the environment. Ethnography’s value as a research methodology comes from its embedding of researchers in social-cultural contexts by developing close and extended interactions with educators and children over an extended period (Last, 2019; Speldewinde, 2022a). Through observing and participating in the teaching and learning, the ethnographer can see and notice what is taking place around them and by spending long periods conducting fieldwork, children and educators build trust with the researcher which can often establish strong relationships. In fact, the authors, during the bush kinder sessions, were not only researchers. Participating in the sessions on occasions saw us as researcher taking on the role of educator, supporting the children’s learning as we spent time with them. The bush kinder educators who participated in this research were all experienced and, whilst preschool children generally attend a bush kinder for 1 calendar year, educators can work in the same bush kinder setting over many years. For example, two educator participants had been each teaching in bush kinders for 8 years. Through ongoing connections with the bush kinder, the educators have been observed to develop understandings of the technological concepts and skills able to be facilitated through the many teaching and learning opportunities that nature provides.

Ethnography’s typical focus is to understand the perspectives of the people being studied (Delamont, 2016; Hammersley, 2006). This can be a limiting factor of ethnographic studies as explaining and accurately describing events happening around the researcher often occurs simultaneously whilst analysing the perspectives and actions of those being studied. This analysis can then be one that differs from, even may conflict with, how those being studied see their world (Hammersley, 2006). Researcher bias and the impact of being in the field space can itself influence children’s behaviour as was the case on occasions in this research where the children would want to show us their learning and discoveries during times we wanted to keep some distance to simply observe events around us (Speldewinde, 2022a, b). Field data often can become dated (Last, 2019) so regular researcher attendance at a field site aids in building the comprehension of how educators and children develop their understandings of technological tools over time. Ethnography is beneficial to the researcher as it often supports participation in the daily events occurring around them. The researcher can be drawn into the educator’s teaching and the children’s play or they can switch guise to become an observer who is distant from children’s activity or even combine both participating and watching (Speldewinde, 2022a). The children’s development as well as growth in educator knowledge over time, in this instance in understanding how technology can be taught and assessed, can clarify the researcher’s contextual understanding (Last, 2019). To further inquire into how the assessment of teaching and learning of technology occurred, we drew upon what Madden (2012, p. 25) describes as ‘a particular set of methods (a toolkit)’. The data applied in this paper was collected through journal notes taken in the field and reflexive note taking upon returning from the field as part of participant observation (Madden, 2012). Images such as those used in this paper were captured on iPads and the quotes applied here from informal conversations with children and educators were similarly captured on iPads and handheld voice recorders. Through drawing upon the data derived from our participant observation of educators and children, listening to conversations either between educators, between children, or between children and educator, our understanding of educators’ and children’s technology development became apparent.

Participants and Data Generation Methods

The initial aim of this research was to investigate how assessment of science teaching and learning occurs in nature-based ECEC contexts (bush kinders). Applying an ethnographic lens led to a number of sub-themes being uncovered including mathematics teaching and learning, gender, varied types of educator pedagogy, children’s STEM identity development, and technology concepts and skills learning. Over the duration of the fieldwork in 2015, 2017, and 2020 conducted by the authors, bush kinder educators from four bush kinders participated in the study. In 2015 and 2017, we spent time as participant observers at the bush kinders, at times watching the events unfolding around us, at other times directly participating in the children’s play, as well as conducting interviews with the educators and parents. In 2020, a series of educator interviews occurred but planned fieldwork was curtailed due to the COVID pandemic limiting research access. Following a break due to the COVID pandemic, and changes to the research team, the research recommenced in 2023 with two of the original bush kinders and one new site. Each bush kinder had between 15 and 25 children and three or four educators and was visited for between 3 and 5 hours each week for 4 weeks in three school terms across 2015, 2017, and 2023 equating to 12 visits per year to each bush kinder group. Additionally, in 2023, we conducted semi-structured interviews (Longhurst, 2003) with seven of the educators to better comprehend how they were assessing the children’s learning during time spent in bush kinder. Through being drawn into conversations and into participating with the technology teaching and learning in the bush kinder, we gained insights that other research methods may not have facilitated. The ethnographic data applied in this paper and thematically analysed (Braun & Clarke, 2006) using Guarrella et al.’s (2022) five stages of assessment includes interview data, researcher fieldwork participation and observations, researcher notes documented during and immediately following the fieldwork, and imagery from photographs of the educator’s STEM teaching. Photographs used here were taken in 2023 during the visits to Sunrise Bush Kinder that made up approximately 120 regular bush kinder visitations over the study’s duration.

The children who attended the bush kinder programs participated in the study; however, we kept their involvement and any interruptions to their play and learning to a minimum. There are ethical issues to be considered when conducting research involving young children. We took care to explain what we were doing at the bush kinder, that we wanted to know about what they were learning at bush kinder, and the data collection methods we were using to the children, in terms that they could understand. As researchers, we always ensured the children assented to our presence during their bush kinder session, asking them questions such as ‘is it OK if we join in/watch you?’ The children knew that they could tell us if they did not want to be observed and we looked for non-verbal indications that children might be withdrawing their consent, such as frowning or turning away. Participants in the study were involved in discussions with the researcher, image-stimulated interviews, and being observed whilst interacting with the children in a bush kinder setting. Ethics approval was gained in 2015 and then again in 2023 (Deakin University Approval Nos. HAE-15-016 and HAE-2024-033) and procedures put in place following the University’s Human Research Ethics protocols. Participation in the research was voluntary and signed consents by the kindergarten organisation, its teachers, and its parents were obtained using the University’s formats. All names of individuals and places used in this paper are pseudonyms.

Findings

During the 2023 interviews with seven bush kinder educators, each was asked to discuss how they assessed the children’s learning during bush kinder. It was immediately apparent to us from the responses that limited, or no formal processes existed, to assess the children’s bush kinder learning, regardless of the learning domain. The processes some educators had adopted to undertake assessment involved a reliance on photographs they had taken to later reflect on what had occurred in the bush kinder. On other occasions, it was left to memory and recollections, often anecdotal notes made at a time after the session had concluded. As researchers, we reflected on our observations of the technology learning that was occurring then, through the lens of the researcher’s purview, speculated about the merits of applying an assessment process to measure children’s growth. Upon becoming aware of the playful learning assessment model for EC science proposed by Guarrella et al. (2022), we questioned whether its five components would be transmissible to EC technology teaching and learning? Through the ethnographer’s guise (Speldewinde, 2022a) of a participant observer, author one then returned to the field and attempted to assess the children’s technology learning, testing Guarrella and colleagues’ assessment model in a context differing from its original purpose.

Throughout the duration of the bush kinder fieldwork between 2015 and 2023, many dozens of rich examples were observed of children actively applying technological tools to improve their situation to deliver an outcome. The availability of loose parts (Gibson et al., 2017), that is moveable materials and equipment to facilitate child-led play, such as bark, sticks, and leaves fallen from trees for example, often repurposed, was a favourite of children who would use them to achieve outcomes for their projects in nature. The two vignettes that follow, written from the perspective of author one (Speldewinde, 2022a, b), are representative of those observations of play-based learning. The first vignette involves children building a rock wall, the second vignette, one child using sticks to measure the depth of a puddle (Figs. 2, 3, 4, and 5).

Fig. 2
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Week one wall building

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Fig. 3
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Week two, building a better wall

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Fig. 4
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Amelia measuring the depth of the water

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Fig. 5
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Knowing the depth of the water, Amelia continues to play, stepping in the puddle

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Vignette One: Building a Better Wall

On a cool breezy Tuesday, I was observing three children at Sunrise Bush Kinder. The weekly session was taking place at a beach and upon arrival the tide was quite low. Many meters of sand were exposed and available for children’s play all the way to the waters’ edge. While some children were keen to get their feet wet at the shoreline, these three children had found a more compelling task. At the top of the beach were many rocks of varying sizes, some small and easily transportable by hand, others large enough so that they could not lift them. The many rocks had given the three children an idea. They decided to build a wall to demarcate a space to play. They tried to move the rocks with a stick, then lever the rocks and roll them but found that to be unsuccessful, the stick was not strong enough. They then found that rocks could be lifted together so two of the children started carrying rocks one at a time. The three children tried to lift one rock together, but they found it too challenging all walking together and gave up. The three children began at one end (the left hand in the image) and started to stack rocks, this went on for about fifteen minutes. Occasionally, the wall would collapse as the rocks were placed in such a way as they wouldn’t stack one on top of each other. Eventually satisfied with their wall, the three children moved on to play in the vicinity of the wall for another hour, coming and going, happy in the space they had procured for themselves.

The following Tuesday, three children returned to the beach for their next bush kinder session. I made a point to watch them from a distance, keen to see if they would build another wall. To my pleasant surprise, they immediately set about searching rocks, keen to build a new wall. I approached them for the express purpose of asking them what they were doing. One child said ‘we are building another wall.’ I asked all three, ‘what did you learn about wall building last week?’ and one child said, ‘last week the wall wouldn’t stay up so we need to use sand or sticks to hold it together’. This time, after chatting to them further then standing back to observe, I could see they were more intent on how they would construct the wall. They were quickly able to determine which rocks would be more stable. We talked about how the wall could be reinforced and they told me that ‘it would be stronger if it had two rows of rocks and it was packed with sand and seaweed’. During its construction, they would stop, even standing back looking at how the wall was developing. Tasks were apportioned, one child had the role to collect the seaweed and pack it around the wall. Conversations were happening and occasional disagreements about which rock should go where. One child said to the others ‘I don’t want to lift the rocks but I can work on packing the sand’, that child’s job became reinforcing the rocks, shifting them slightly to ensure the wall was stable. I continued to listen attentively to see how the children’s skills were developing during the play. This time, I noticed that the wall did not topple over and the building had been far more complex. The three children acknowledged this as they spoke to each other, quite proud of their wall.

Vignette Two: How Deep Is That Hole?

Mid-winter at Sunrise Bush Kinder, the ground was very wet following substantial overnight rain. With large trees, often sticks, branches and leaves would fall to the ground and children would use these for a range of exploration and discovery. Some of the children found the puddles fascinating and were jumping over them. Not wanting to get wet, some kept clear of the mud and puddles. One girl, Amelia, decided to join in the play but was unsure. Amelia had been standing to side, watching some of the other children play. I approached Amelia to ask about the ground being wet and all the water. Amelia said to me, ‘but Chris, I’m scared about how deep the puddle is, I don’t want to get my pants wet.’ I replied to Amelia, ‘what can you do to see how deep the puddle is?’ Amelia replied, ‘I can put my hand in there’ I replied, ‘what if it is too deep.’ Amelia replied, ‘could I put stick in it.’ Locating a stick and examining its length and checking if it would flex to ensure it would remain straight when entering the water, Amelia set about measuring many of the puddles and eventually deciding all were safe to jump over. Amelia would move the stick up and down, poking and pressing it into the soft mud at the bottom of the puddle to confirm the depth.

A little while later, in another part of the parkland, Amelia found more puddles to cross. This time it was clear to me Amelia was more confident in knowing how to measure their depth. I called to Amelia and asked what Amelia was doing. I watched as Amelia measured the puddle, putting the stick in and out in several places in the puddle. Amelia appeared to have mastered puddle depth measuring. Amelia told me that ‘I want to step into it’ and I asked Amelia ‘are you worried about how deep the puddle is?’, only for Amelia to tell me that, ‘no Chris, I know how deep this puddle is and it’s OK to step into’. Without hesitation, Amelia placed one foot into the muddy water, still carrying the measuring stick.

Discussion

Once we became aware through our interviews that the educators lacked a formal process to assess children’s bush kinder learning, we began to search for assessment models which may be applicable in the context of bush kinders and technology teaching. The two vignettes provided here, which are a cross-section or snapshot of many examples of teaching and learning we witnessed, provide evidence to support the notion that children’s play-based technology learning can be assessed using a five-step model (Guarrella et al., 2022). Each of the five phases, learning through play, purposely collecting information, assessing competencies and recognising interests, selecting learning objectives, and preparing teaching environment and learning environment, when considered alongside the events described in the two vignettes, allows for opportunities to assess children’s application and the subsequent learning development of technology. The two vignettes provided here, one that occurred during one session and the other that occurred over two sessions, 1 week apart, can be analysed using the five-phase model and is demonstrated in Table 1. Table 1 draws upon data and analyses it using the assessment phases with the technology learning children apply in a nature-based ECE context.

Table 1 Data analysis using Guarrella et al.’s model (2022) for assessing playful learning
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Learning Through Play

During their time spent at a bush kinder, educators encourage children to play. The activities that are undertaken often involve the children determining their own course of actions. Through their actions and their play, the children with educator support can learn about the world around them (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2021). In both vignettes, aligned with Guarrella et al.’s (2022) process, my intention was to observe the children to understand what their learning priorities were. As I observed and spoke to the children carrying rocks and Amelia at play amongst the puddles, I was able to ascertain that not only were the children participating in some form of self-directed learning through play but what their learning needs were. The children’s determination to build a rock wall was made to enable the demarcation of a space for further play applying rocks as technology to improve their situation (Albion et al., 2018) and enable their play. Amelia’s play was limited by Amelia’s own concern about the depth of a puddle and whether by not clearing the puddle when jumping, Amelia would be immersed in the muddy water. The learning here became Amelia’s application of a technological tool, a stick, to enable measurement of the depth of a small body of water.

Purposely Collecting Information

Taking on the role of the educator, here I was given two opportunities to collect information on what these children were doing. In both examples, I felt I needed to comprehend the skills children were learning so as Guarrella et al. (2022) indicate, that I could classify the three wall builders and Amelia’s learning progression. Vignette 1 provided me with opportunities to collect information that included how the children were selecting rocks then how they built the rock wall. I asked myself, what were the thinking processes that the wall builders were applying to make their selection and often this was using trial and error as a problem-solving approach. In the first week, the wall builders learned that a rock would be stacked, then it would stay in place or topple. I was also keen to return the following week and see if the same children would build another wall and apply their learning from the previous week. By the second week, the fallible rock wall from week one influenced how they stacked the rocks. The children’s determination to have a space to play complimented their desire for a sturdy rock wall structure. My information collection occurred through observing and then participating by questioning the wall builders, asking them what steps they were taking and what they had learned from the previous week. I sought to understand the nuances of the wall builder’s thinking over the 2 weeks, as they collected the rocks then how they stacked the rocks in week one and again in week two. I was able to collect and document information by talking to the children about their intentions and what they saw as successes and failures. Similarly, in vignette 2, by questioning Amelia’s search for an appropriate measuring device, I was able to reflect on Amelia’s learning through the assessment of what would and would not suffice when it came to the effectiveness of applying a measuring tool.

Assessing Competencies and Recognising Interests

Guarrella et al. (2022) found that ‘assessment was influenced by contextual influences, affective responses, and teaching practice’ (p. 633). Assessing young children’s technology learning in the context of bush kinders, as confirmed by the educators interviewed, is often lacking or left to observations and anecdotal note taking. Yet, in both vignettes, we can see that children’s competency in applying technology can be assessed through their application of the skills they apply during play. Prior to applying the stick to measure puddle depth, Amelia selected a stick that was appropriate for the task after some testing of different sticks by looking at them and handling them. The competency of the children building the wall could be viewed over the two sessions as their experience of what would be appropriate rocks to erect the wall.

Select Learning Objectives

Both vignettes demonstrate my ability to select objectives that led to technology learning. I wanted to understand how each child had determined what was a successful outcome in their application of design technology. For the wall builders, the learning objectives became how to build a better wall, one that would serve its purpose and not fall over. My selection of a learning objective was determined through observations and discussions with the wall builders at the beginning of week two about their previous their learning from week one. What had occurred in week one was used to inform my thinking as an educator, helping me to select a learning objective that considered how the wall builders applied technological thinking and a process-driven approach in constructing their wall. Our discussions led to them to the realisation that sand and seaweed would be fit for providing additional stability to the wall. For Amelia, I wanted to understand Amelia’s thinking regarding what an appropriate technological tool is to measure depth. My selection of the learning objective was influenced by Amelia’s capacity to determine what materials would be suited to the task, would Amelia choose sticks, rocks, or grasses? For me in the guise of an educator, my action in selecting the learning objective was determined by what I was observing Amelia doing and what Amelia had articulated to me as what Amelia was hoping to achieve.

Preparing the Teaching and Learning Environment

A challenge lies for educators in preparing a nature-based context where the teaching and learning is reliant upon what is already available. Yet, educators can prepare for technology learning by being cognisant of what may occur. My awareness of the group of children as wall builders allowed me to prepare questions and insights; I wanted to gain to assess what the children had learned in their previous bush kinder session. With Amelia’s learning of how to apply the technology of a measuring stick, my preparation needed to be in the immediacy of the learning environment. I could not collect sticks in the lead up to the session in the hope that a child would use them to measure the depth of a water puddle. What I could prepare though is a rapid pivot in what I was observing and then stepping into Amelia’s play to support the learning. Being prepared to adopt an emergent curriculum (Collins & Clarke, 2008; Speldewinde et al., 2024) in which my teaching was malleable to the events occurring around me in real time was important to support the learning of both the children at the beach and Amelia on the wet day in the parkland. It is the awareness of what opportunities may arise at the beach or on a wet day that is the preparation an educator can undertake to be ready to support children’s technology learning in a bush kinder.

Conclusion

In terms of teaching and learning, the data provided in the vignettes and the analysis presented in this paper provide not only insights into the rich technology learning opportunities afforded by bush kinders but how these opportunities that arise during play can be assessed. Through assessment, children’s growth of technology knowledge and application has the potential to be carried into later schooling where more complex technological curriculum is enacted. Bush kinder provides a range of natural materials, both loose and fixed, which enable children to learn technology through play. Often, sticks are a simple tool to apply as technology but as shown here, the construction of a rock wall to improve the situation of a group of children at the beach is as valuable as playing with sticks to measure the depth of water. The role of an educator is critical to the way that the natural settings support children’s learning experiences. As described here, author one, through his time spent in a bush kinder as not only researcher but as a participant in the children’s play, took on the role of educator. The opportunity arose in which the children’s technology understandings were focussed on. Having a cyclical model to undertake assessment of technology learning supported the process through which the children’s learning was assessed.

Where an educator can support children to lead their learning and the natural resources are (re)purposed by augmenting them with other material, the children themselves develop clear understandings of the technology and technological tools in nature. But educators need to be adaptable, ready to quickly make determinations about what is occurring in a context that requires little preparation of learning activities. Generally, educators are wholly reliant on what is available in the park or forest or paddock or beach setting to teach. The implications of this research point to the opportunities available for assessing young children’s learning in Australian bush kinders and more broadly other contexts such as European and UK forest schools. ECEC educators need simple models to conduct assessment, models that are not simply connected to science and technology but across multiple domains. Guarrella et al.’s (2022) five-step assessment model for assessing playful learning of science provides a valuable framework to reflect on how technology teaching and learning can be assessed. It is the type of learning that takes place in natural surroundings that make contexts such as a bush kinder an appropriate place to conduct technology education.

As bush kinder numbers grow and other contexts become aware of the benefits of taking children into nature-based ECEC settings, educator awareness of the technology teaching and learning opportunities will become necessary. Educators will need to be skilled in developing their own awareness of what technology is and technology’s prevalence in nature and how to incorporate technology education into ECEC. Initial teacher education has an important role to play in supporting new educators to be equipped to identify and apply the types of opportunities described in this paper. The vignettes demonstrate that a level of educator knowledge is necessary to be able to support children’s discovery-based learning and to assess the learning of technology skills. To support educators, policy makers will play an important role into the future in writing curriculum that recognises the value of embedding technology teaching into nature-based approaches to children’s learning.