An Investigation of Preschool Level Out-of-Class Education Activities in Finland, Estonia, Ireland, and Turkey within the Framework of 21st Century Skills

Abstract

The skills and competencies to be acquired in the 21st century are collected under these topics: learning and innovation skills; life and career skills; information, media and technology skills. The changes taking place in the world, in information technologies and global transformation, have promoted the development of different approaches, models, skills, and various learning theories in education. One of the prominent features shaping this period is the acquisition of these desired skills from the pre-school period, and this acquisition occurs through providing children with different experiences and offering rich environments and materials to children. In this respect, the activities carried outdoors have gained as much significance as in-class activities. This study aims to compare the 21st-century skills-based outdoor educational activities in Finland, Estonia, Ireland, and Turkey. In this respect, the horizontal and diagnostic approach used in comparative education studies is applied in combination. Document analysis is used in this research to gather data on the objectives of the countries regarding preschool out-of-class education as well as out-of-class education environments; the activities, modules, and assessment methods used were obtained from Finland, Estonia, Ireland, and Turkey’s Ministry of Education websites, countries’ laws on education, official pre-school education reports, education systems, articles, and online databases, etc. Among the countries examined, Finland, Estonia, and Ireland have learning modules related to out-of-class learning activities, which indicates that these countries have more options and thus a greater variety of out-of-class activities and environments. It also indicates that out-of-class education activities are carried out more extensively in these countries. It has been concluded that Ireland has more out-of-class learning activities in number and a number of the activities address a higher number of developmental areas. However, it has also been revealed that there is no module, program, or booklet for out-of-class learning activities in Turkey. From this point of view, the recommendation is for Turkish education to create a preschool education program module with out-of-class activities to adapt the Turkish preschool education program to the imperatives of contemporary learning outcomes.