Learning from Finnish Educators’ Focus on the Outdoors
As in the United States, Finland is experiencing an increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse student population. From 2013 to 2023, the number of immigrants to the country ranged between 28,700 and almost 50,000 per year( Statista 2024). In 2024, Finland saw a net migration gain of 45,450 immigrants( Statistics Finland 2024a)— many of whom arrived under the Temporary Protection Directive, especially those escaping conflicts like the war in Ukraine( Statistics Finland 2024b).
Empathy toward nature and encouraging children to play outdoors are at the heart of Finland’ s education, traditions, and beliefs( Gurholt 2014; Waite 2020). Through this focus, emergent bilingual learners in the country benefit from an educational approach that capitalizes on children’ s intrinsic interest in nature while targeting academic, biliterate, and bilingual development. Nature-based learning in Finland has seen an increase in interest among educators and policymakers, and recent reforms to the country’ s national core curriculum include a more holistic approach and closer collaboration with nature( Finnish National Agency of Education 2016, 2018).
During our visit to two early learning programs in Jyväskylä, Finland, we found that the outdoors played a central role in many instructional activities, providing children with numerous opportunities throughout the day to engage in play, discovery, and learning. We believe that much can be learned from the country’ s emphasis on nature-based education and that a developmentally appropriate curriculum can be designed with nature and multilingual learners in mind.
2020). They learn across disciplines by engaging their senses— observing, touching, hearing, smelling, and( sometimes) tasting their discoveries, such as when adults share an edible fruit like wild berries.
Nature’ s multisensory attributes and rich resources and materials can prompt the compelling interactions that are necessary for language and literacy development( Agostini et al. 2018; Kuo & Jordan 2019; NASEM 2024). As children immerse themselves in and actively explore nature, they are immediately stimulated to engage in differentiating, classifying, and labeling( Kellert 2002)— intellectual processes known as cognitive biophilia( Lawrence 1993). Their intrinsic interest in and gravitation toward elements in nature also may lead them to develop new vocabulary and a deeper knowledge of the syntactic aspects of language, or linguistic biophilia( Arreguín-Anderson 2015). In other words, direct access to nature often motivates children to describe their discoveries and communicate their thinking, thereby making connections across subjects and disciplines in a process that incorporates their current linguistic repertoire and the key vocabulary and language structures that they hear adults and peers using.
The idea of linking nature to curriculum design is not new: Noddings( 1992) proposed that“ all children must learn to care for other human beings and must find an ultimate concern in some center of care”( xii). From Noddings’ s perspective, a curriculum could be built and organized entirely around themes of care, including care for self, intimate others, strangers and distant others, nonhuman animals, plants, the living environment, objects and instruments, and ideas. In addition, educators and thought leaders, such as Friedrich Fröbel, have long advocated for integrating nature into learning environments, believing that natural settings foster creativity and connection to the world. Modern approaches continue this legacy, with outdoor play recognized as critical to children’ s physical, cognitive, and emotional development. As Frost and Sutterby( 2017) highlight, outdoor environments encourage exploration, problem solving, and social skills. Nature-based experiences align with developmentally appropriate practices, providing children with hands-on experiences that support their overall growth and learning( Frost & Sutterby 2017; Prochner 2021).
8 Young Children
Summer 2025