PROmoting Early Childhood Outside 2.0

Licensed early learning and childcare centres (ELCCs) can provide children with rich opportunities for outdoor play that they may not otherwise experience in their home or community. However, many ELCCs struggle to provide high quality and stimulating outdoor play time. The primary aim of this study is to develop, implement and test a comprehensive multi-component project, the PROmoting Early Childhood Outside (PRO-ECO), to build capacity for, and address the complexities of building support for outdoor play in early childcare centre settings. This is to ultimately increase children's access to engaging outdoor spaces for play.The overarching goal of this project is to develop and evaluate a comprehensive multi- component project, called the PROmoting Early Childhood Outside (PRO- ECO). This project is to increase children's outdoor play and the diversity of outdoor play behaviour in Canadian ELCC settings providing full-day licensed care for preschoolers. PRO-ECO integrates development of policies and procedure, early childhood educator (ECE) training and mentorship, outdoor space modifications and, parent/caregiver engagement.The PRO-ECO project will be co-developed, implemented and evaluated in partnership with provincial childcare organizations and ten ELCCs. A wait-list control cluster randomised trial design (RCT) will evaluate the effectiveness of the project and how it can be modified to tackle barriers in diverse settings.This project is an extension of the PRO-ECO pilot study (protocol ID H20-03912-A001, Clinicaltrials.gov ID NCT05073380).

Participant inclusion and exclusion criteria is divided into three distinct sets of levels- 1) organization level, 2) adult individual participation, and 3) child participation.The ELCC site inclusion criteria:We will select ELCCs providing full day care to preschool children to include in the study in consideration of readiness of program to participate and perceived need for the program, and time spent.Adult participation inclusion criteria:Being early childhood educators (ECEs) or staff (e.g., administrators, directors and supervisors) at the participating ELCCs.Child participation inclusion criteria:Being between the ages of 2.5 to 6 years;Currently enrolled in one of the participating ELCCs;Obtained parental consent for their participation in the study.