ABSTRACT

This article discusses a single case analysis of teacher-child interactions on an everyday bush walk inNew Zealand. It uses a combination of the Leuven wellbeing scale (Laevers, 2000) and aconversation analysis approach to explore how children and teachers attend to specific features of theoutdoor environment in a way that encourages risk-taking and builds resilience through problemsolving. The collaborative achievement of the activities between the pre- school teacher and the fouryear-old children are discussed as an important and necessary aspect of the interactions, which wesuggest may represent physical sustained shared thinking, for supporting wellbeing whilst buildingresilience and risk-taking. Implications for future practice are considered with regard toimplementation of early childhood curricula.

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