Outdoor learning is generally understood to mean educational activities experienced outside the traditional classroom. While outdoor learning is widely recognized within the broader field of education and positive outcomes well documented, lack of confidence and skill often prevent teachers from tapping into the resources of the outdoor environment to provide enhanced learning opportunities for their students. This paper addressed this concern by studying current innovative outdoor teaching and learning strategies and practices in primary education.
Information analyzed for this paper draws from an earlier study that examined outdoor, environmental and sustainability pedagogies across three Australian elementary schools. Findings from that study showed that teachers used the school grounds and other local outdoor settings to promote learning in a broad range of interdisciplinary studies. This paper examines two vignettes from one of the three schools to investigate the impact of outdoor pedagogy and children's learning in a school ground environment. A special feature of this school consists of an expansive garden surrounding an ecological classroom where children begin and finish their environmental lessons. The two vignettes reflect information gathered from a set of semi-structured interviews with the school's gardening/environmental teacher and students' reflective workbook entries. The focus of the analysis was on how outdoor learning was enabled and scaffolded by the teacher. Vignette #1 involved students in grades 5/6 during a garden upkeep activity designed by the teacher in direct correlation to the curriculum. The hands-on activities of this lesson exemplifies deep embodied place learning, meaning that children come to know place through bodily, personal, and experiential ways. Vignette #2 highlights students in grades 3/4 engaged in a mathematical lesson at the school wetland. This lesson was designed collaboratively by the environmental teacher and two classroom teachers concerned about the lack of student engagement in mathematical lessons. Outcomes of this lesson, as noted by the classroom teachers, included “exceptional (and unprecedented) levels of participation from students in completing the applied mathematical tasks in the wetland setting.”
Key observations from this study highlight “ways in which the role of teacher changes when traditional pedagogies are replaced with outdoor/place pedagogies.” The teachers, while framing what and how the children would learn, provided opportunities for learning through self-directed processes. Teachers guided and facilitated the students' learning versus telling them what to do. Yet, the teachers were present and actively engaged at strategic moments. Their role included inviting children to express and communicate their learning in multiple and creative ways, such as writing, mapping, sharing and debating ideas, questioning, testing, and taking risks.
Findings from this study “indicate that school ground pedagogies, particularly when framed by self-directed learning tasks increases student autonomy, efficacy and achievement.” These findings support initiatives aimed at increasing teacher capacity to incorporate locally-based curriculum and pedagogy in school grounds and other outdoor settings as a way to enrich students' learning.
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