Mixed-age grouping in early childhood – creating the outdoor learning environment

Children attending centre-based early childhood care and education programmes
across Australia are most likely to be grouped according to age and
development. While multi- or mixed-age grouping has been seen to have
positive benefits on young children’s learning and pro-social behaviours, this
approach is not usually adopted in the organisation of children’s grouping in
most long day care settings across the county. This paper reports on a case study
which explored one urban children’s setting where the outdoor learning space
has been specifically designed to enable a mixed-age approach for children. The
findings suggest that while the educators see many benefits across the age groups
in engaging in this approach, there is still a preference to segregate the very
young children arising from concerns for their safety. The study also found that
planning for learning especially in regards pro-social learning with the older
children has been problematic