Making bush kinder learning visible without turning it into a checklist

A child balancing across a log, negotiating a route with a friend or returning to a place after rain may be showing learning that is easy to miss in a conventional assessment record. Bush kinder educators face a familiar challenge: how to document that learning for children and families while preserving the open-ended character of outdoor play.

A study published on 20 September 2026 in Education Sciences describes one response. Chris Speldewinde and colleagues worked with three bush kinder educators to design and try the Bush Kinder Assessment Tool, or BKAT. The tool was shaped by the educators’ experiences and linked to the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), Australia’s curriculum framework for the early years. 

The work is a small participatory action research project. Educators helped develop the approach, used it in their settings and reflected on what it revealed. That design makes the paper especially relevant to practitioners interested in documentation; it also means the findings concern the educators’ experiences, not a measured improvement in children’s learning.

Bush kinder learning can unfold across uneven ground, changing weather, natural materials and interactions that were not planned in advance. An assessment method developed for a more predictable indoor activity may fail to capture the choices children make in that setting.

The researchers developed BKAT with EYLF learning outcomes in mind, initially focusing on wellbeing. Rather than imposing a rating scale or requiring every observation to look the same, the approach was designed to be adapted to local conditions. The paper describes educators using it in different ways: one focused on two children, another considered a whole group, and a third followed three children.

That variation is a feature of the study. It shows educators testing how a common framework might work with different groups and documentation needs, while still paying attention to children’s own actions. A brief account of a child returning to a challenging route, for example, could prompt reflection about confidence, persistence and relationships without reducing the play to a score.

The aim is to make an educator’s thinking visible. What was noticed? Why might it matter for this child? What questions does it raise for the next visit? Those questions are more useful than simply recording that an outdoor session took place or listing activities completed.

For service leaders, the study raises a practical issue: educators need ways to explain learning in nature-based programs, but documentation should remain manageable. The researchers’ collaborative process suggests that tools are more likely to fit a setting when the educators who use them help shape the approach.

It also invites teams to look at what their existing records leave out. Do observations describe children’s decisions and interactions, or only the materials they encountered? Can educators explain links to the EYLF without claiming that every moment of play demonstrates every outcome? Are families given a picture of how a child’s interests develop across repeated visits?

These are editorial and practice implications drawn from the paper, rather than conclusions tested against a comparison group. The published work does not establish that BKAT is a validated measure of child development, that it reduces documentation time or that it should replace existing assessment processes. Its value at this stage lies in showing how three educators approached a real documentation problem.

Nature-based programs vary in their environments, communities and ways of working. Further research with more educators and settings would help establish how the tool functions across those differences and whether it changes educators’ decisions over time. For now, the study offers a useful prompt for reflective practice: when educators document outdoor play, the record should help them understand the child more clearly, not narrow what the child is free to explore.