*** FUNCTION VS. FORM ***

I was really energized to find some pertinent information on my research topic, “The Benefits of Natural Day Preschool.”  I enjoy learning new terms for early childhood pedagogy. I learned of a new phrase called “playscape” and that children absorb information through perceptive education while playing outside. This is called function.  “Heft (1988) suggested an alternative approach to describe the environment, which focused on function rather than form. The functional approach corresponds better to the children’s relations to their environment. Intuitively children use their environment for physical challenges and play; they perceive the functions of the landscape and use them for play”(Fjørtoft, 2000, p.111).  I’m not gonna lie, my search path isn’t pretty, but it resulted in a “Scholarly (peer reviewed) Article from a Journal the proposed material that is helpful beyond my initial theory and fuels my intended purpose.  My hope within the scope of this research is to add accurate learning methods to my future profession as a teacher. I spent a good hour and a half just finding an article that aided in my search for the benefits of organic learning.  I was sure to write down all of my flawless search methods.  I’m kidding, have you been listening at all?  I did write down all of my sad attempts, search terms and limits, this made it much easier to record all of my missteps, so that I could clearly share them with all of my esteemed colleagues.  My favorite part was when I went from, NO RESULTS to 168,472 RESULTS.

Search Path:

I began searching Academic Search Premier through the Leatherby Library database. My key words started as:

• Natural day preschool
• Organic preschool
• Nature preschool

I set the limits for scholarly (peer reviewed) journals and the “also search within full text of the article.”

• Document type: article
• Publication type: all
• PDF full text

I chose to wait until setting a date limit.

NO RESULTS FOUND!  (Geeze, I felt like that was a lot of work for nothing)

NEW SEARCH---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Used same search terms as above

Changed limit to:

• Find any Search terms

168,472----results----and none of them (at least the first 20) related to the intended research topic.

NEW SEARCH---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Natural day preschool
• Organic preschool
• Nature preschool

I checked the “smart text search/full text box” Peer reviewed...blah blah blah again,

NO RESULTS FOUND!

NEW SEARCH---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Search Terms:

• Natural day preschool
• Organic preschool
• Nature preschool

Any search terms/related words, nothing directly related to my intended article, but I did spot some new words to use in my search terms.

• “Outdoor preschool” in quotation marks, and interesting article regarding “Risky play in Natural Vs. Ordinary Playgrounds, I really wanted this article to be useful, and it was but only because again, it led me to zero in on better search terms.

NEW SEARCH---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Search Terms:

• Playscape

• Natural
• Related results

I found something that looked like it may be useful, but sadley***Full Text Not Available***

1.5 hours in I begin to start typing forcefully on my keyboard, this doesn’t help either, in case you were wondering.

NEW SEARCH----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Search Terms:

• Playscape

• Natural
• Related results

Clicked on ALL DATABASES, my last ditch effort...I found a title, I read the abstract, I clicked the citation tool bar on the right and copied and pasted it in case I navigated away from this article and couldn’t find my way back.

I looked at the “subject terms”

• Primary education
• Play
• Child development

I found a scholarly (peer reviewed) article from a Journal, that was specific to my research topic.

so here you go:

Fjortoft, I. (2001).  The natural environment as a playground for children: The impact of outdoor play activities in pre-primary school children. Early Childhood Education Journal. 29(2), 111-17. doi:10.1016/s0169-2046(00)00045-1