School-based outdoor education is positively related to teachers’ subjective well-beingResearch has established that students benefit from outdoor education, but this Canadian study claims to be the first attempt to examine if outdoor education is also associated with teachers’ subjective well-being. Motivated in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, this quantitative study tested the hypothesis that school-based outdoor education and teachers’ subjective well-being are positively linked. This research was timely with COVID-19 (1) motivating more schools to move classes outdoors and (2) prompting widespread mental health concerns during the pandemic. The authors’ assumption was that outdoor education could potentially benefit both students and teachers.
Specifically, the study tested two hypotheses: (1) outdoor educators would report higher subjective well-being scores than teachers not teaching outdoors, and (2) the more frequently they taught outdoors, the higher teachers would rate their subjective well-being. The researchers administered a questionnaire to 386 pre-school and primary school teachers to document their demographic and professional backgrounds, the frequency with which they taught outdoors, and their reported subjective well-being. They then grouped participants into two groups—outdoor educators and non-outdoor educators—to compare their average subjective well-being scores. In addition, the researchers analyzed correlations between the number of times teachers taught outdoors and their reported subjective well-being scores.
Based on statistical analysis of teachers’ questionnaire results, the researchers determined that outdoor educators had significantly higher subjective well-being scores than teachers who only taught indoors. For the most part, however, the number of times they taught outdoors did not have a significant effect on their subjective well-being. More specifically, comparing the average subjective well-being scores of teachers who did and did not teach outdoors showed that outdoor educators reported better scores for total subjective well-being, life evaluation, sense of fulfillment and purpose, affect, school connectedness, enjoyment, anger, anxiety, workload, organizational well-being, and teacher-student interactions—every subjective dimension tested except for feeling of teaching efficacy. The two groups’ responses varied in part according to teachers’ number of students, age, and teaching experience. Contrary to the researchers’ predictions, the frequency of teaching outdoors was not significantly related to most subjective well-being measures. The one exception was a weak correlation between frequency of teaching outdoors and teachers’ feeling of teaching efficacy. That is, the more teachers taught outdoors, the more they believed in their abilities to teach outdoors effectively.
Overall, these results showed the researchers’ hypotheses were partially correct. School-based outdoor education was positively related to teachers’ subjective well-being. In particular, outdoor educators had significantly higher average scores than non-outdoor educators for total subjective well-being, life evaluation, enjoyment, teacher-student interactions, and workload. However, the frequency with which participants taught outdoors did not correlate in a significant way with most subjective well-being measures. Based on these preliminary findings, the researchers recommend quasi-experimental studies to determine the nature of the associations between outdoor education and teachers’ subjective well-being.
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