Eco-social pedagogy through outdoor learning in early childhood education: Teachers' outdoor practices in northern Spain

Early childhood education is increasingly recognised as a critical space for cultivating climate awareness, care, and agency through embodied and relational learning, with outdoor education emerging as a particularly powerful context for this development. This mixed-methods study examines how educators in regular schools in the Basque Country (Northern Spain) describe the role of sustained engagement with nearby ecosystems in supporting eco-social pedagogies and education for sustainability in early childhood settings. Data were collected through questionnaires completed by educators representing schools participating in the Forest School Network (n = 28 schools), complemented by 21 semi-structured interviews with teachers who regularly engage in outdoor learning in nearby ecosystems. Findings indicate that outdoor environments function as emotionally secure and pedagogically generative spaces where children engage in place-based practices such as tree planting, litter collection, habitat creation, monitoring invasive species, measuring water and air temperature, participating in citizen science initiatives, and using local ecological knowledge, including Basque species names. Educators described these everyday practices as fostering eco-social dispositions grounded in care, relational ethics, agency, and shared environmental responsibility. Teachers described a professional shift from transmitting environmental knowledge toward facilitating inquiry, empathy, and collective forms of environmental care. At the same time, many educators identify gaps in institutional support and climate-related training within teacher education programmes. By situating these insights within current debates on early childhood climate education, the study contributes grounded empirical evidence on how educators perceive the relationship between eco-social pedagogy, outdoor learning and environmental education in early childhood settings. It suggests that outdoor education, when framed as emotional, agential, ethical, and community-oriented engagement, is perceived by educators as creating opportunities to encourage dispositions associated with environmental responsibility, care, and sustainability.