Children Learning Outside the Classroom

This chapter examines the literature that explored creativity and how this may be fostered with young children. Learning outside the classroom has the potential to extend a child's technological knowledge and promote design solutions to real-world problems. Pedagogically, there are a number of challenges that teachers face when teaching design and technology (D&T) to 5-year-old children; for example, their design capabilities and their limited understanding of the continuous process required to complete a final outcome. A teacher's reason for taking children on a visit can be viewed as the most important decision when planning a learning experience outside the classroom. Planning a teaching unit that incorporated education outside the classroom and D&T reflected the cognitive apprenticeship model that is associated with teaching D&T – the concept of working alongside an expert in order to respond to a technological problem. The impact that the visit to the factory had on the children's design ideas was significant.