Early Childhood Educator Participation in State-wide Outdoor Education Professional Development

Abstract

Outdoor time has been shown to benefit different domains of young children’s development, including health, social-emotional learning, and cognitive outcomes. Early care and education (ECE) providers play a prominent role in the quality of outdoor experiences children receive while in their care. Yet, few studies have examined ECE programs’ participation in outdoor education professional development (PD)—specifically, which programs elect to participate in this type of PD. This study examined (i) the characteristics of ECE programs that applied to participate in the state-wide outdoor education PD in Delaware, United States, and (ii) which program characteristics predicted ECE programs’ participation in outdoor education PD. Administrative data on N = 828 programs’ characteristics and internal records on the application for the state-wide outdoor education PD collected over five PD cohorts for n = 170 programs were analyzed using logistic regression. The results showed that ECE programs that were located in less disadvantaged areas, previously participated in other state-offered PD, received program funding, and accepted child care subsidy were more likely to participate in the outdoor education PD. Findings of the study inform agencies’ and PD coordinators’ efforts to extend recruitment outreach to particular groups of ECE programs.