Retrospective research is a critical tool for informing educators about the long-term impacts of outdoor learning and the design of future programmes. In this article, we present the findings from Aotearoa, New Zealand research with 148 young women in their 20s. These young women completed a compulsory 28-day school outdoor programme when they were 14–15 years old. We used an alumnae survey to explore their long-term perspectives on this learning. The remote residential programme had four key learning goals: connecting with others, being brave and having adventures; acquiring life skills; and embracing new beginnings. Statistical analysis of the survey responses demonstrated that the majority of the young women in this study identified long-lasting learning from the programme. The participants recalled long-term learning that included forming meaningful friendships, developing independence, reducing wasteful practices, and persevering in the face of challenges. Reports of negative aspects revealed that outdoor learning and social living were uncomfortable and challenging for some. This retrospective research highlights important future considerations for remote, long-duration outdoor learning, such as how educators help students manage without devices and cope with mental health struggles in this environment. The majority of the young women in this study valued the programme’s focus on developing resilience, relationship building, conflict resolution, as well as how to implement sustainable practices in adolescence. The findings demonstrate the important role of retrospective research for understanding the ongoing influence of outdoor learning on participants’ lives and informing future learning.
Nature play programs are becoming increasingly common in both regulated and unregulated early childhood education settings across Australia. While existing research has established that regulated Australian nature play programs are place-responsive, aligning with Danish Nature Kindergarten approaches (more than British Forest School models), there is negligible research among unregulated programs. In response to this gap, we investigated the philosophies and pedagogies of facilitators in unregulated, Australian nature play programs. We employed a qualitative multiple case study methodology and explored eight individual case studies through multiphase, sequential data generation. The three phases involved two focus groups, plus one individual field observation, and semi-structured interviews with each facilitator participant. Through both thematic and narrative analysis, we identified nine shared philosophical themes: nature connections, First Nations Peoples perspectives, sustainable actions, child-directed play, child-responsive interactions, risky or adventurous play, challenging mainstream paradigms, advocating and educating, and building community. However, variation in the depth of facilitators’ approaches led to our identification of three nature play facilitator typologies: nature pedagogues, nature guides, and nature players. These findings provide the first empirical insight into unregulated Australian nature play programs and introduce a framework of facilitator typologies for supporting critical reflection and professional learning. In the context of increasing nature play uptake, this study offers evidence that unregulated programs can be underpinned by place-responsive philosophies and pedagogies, thus informing future practice, policy, and guidelines for nature play in the early years sector.
This article aims to consider, and possibly begin to rethink, educational theory and practice. In order to do this, the paper focuses on two parallel threads of research: ecologizing schools and eco-social-cultural change. The first thread examines a public K-7 outdoor school, designed to emphasize environmental and experiential learning, reconnecting the natural and human worlds through place-based, imaginative, and ecologizing education. The second thread draws from a research project on social innovation and systemic change which identifies six design prompts for education for eco-social-cultural transformation. These prompts are outlined, described, and then grounded through examples and findings from the school. This paper offers insights relevant to outdoor and experiential education and likely beyond by adding to the conversations the need for educational change to address complex ecological and social justice challenges for uncertain futures.
Amidst concerns of ‘nature-deficit disorder’, the effectiveness of nature-based education hinges on teacher competence. However, a pronounced ‘belief-practice gap’ exists, with many educators feeling underprepared. This study constructs a comprehensive competency map for nature school teachers through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) following PRISMA guidelines. Synthesizing 53 studies from Scopus and ERIC, the review identifies eight core competency domains. Crucially, personal attributes—such as positive childhood experiences, values, and self-efficacy—serve as the fundamental bedrock for technical skills. The study concludes that the ‘belief-practice gap’ is an issue of internal disposition, not just technical skill, implying a needed paradigm shift in teacher education. Teacher education programs must move from solely teaching ‘what to do’ to holistically developing ‘who they are’ as educators.
This paper presents an embedded-multiple case study that gathered reflections of menstrual experiences of outdoor leaders and individuals who participate in a variety of outdoor activities to raise awareness and encourage support. Online questionnaires were completed by a total of 14 outdoor leaders and 26 outdoor enthusiasts. Four participants further engaged in an in-depth interview online. The data collected was analysed to depict menstruation experiences in both personal and professional outdoor contexts. While experiences of menstruation are unique to each individual and context, many resonances were identified. The key resonances include: sense of self, self-sufficiency, compromise, environmental stewardship, wants, mental and physical load, and safe spaces. This research gathered stories to better understand individual menstruation experiences in outdoor settings, which we can use to build a more inclusive and supportive outdoor environment for all.
In this paper I invite outdoor educators to consider a different way of planning programs. I start by arguing for outdoor education as a subject with its own curriculum, interpreted and applied locally and contextually. Working with such curriculum in outdoor education has often been undertaken via programming, which emphasizes transfer of learning beyond the program. Another way of working with curriculum is to mimic school subjects, for which assessment of learning is key, with major assessment occurring after learning is completed, summatively. I suggest there is a further way that draws on aspects of both but does not position the main focus of learning as something that happens after the program is finished. This further way I describe as curriculuming, turning curriculum from a noun into a verb, as Boomer did. Curriculuming embraces teacher and student agency, with assessment also positioned as a verb: formative assessing. Consequently, the assessing task is the outdoor education program itself, with each program activity being organised around criteria as the vehicle enabling reflection, feedback, and transfer of learning within the program. Employed in this way, criteria situate explicit teaching where and when it is most relevant, as well as enabling collection of evidence of learning throughout a program.
This study investigates the role of Forest School (FS) as a model for inclusive education within a mainstream English primary school. Employing a mixed-methods case study, the research combined systematic observations using the Leuven Scale of Involvement with parent questionnaires and teacher interviews to examine differences in pupil engagement across FS, classroom, and playtime settings. Results demonstrate consistently higher levels of involvement during FS sessions compared with classroom lessons and recess, with particularly notable gains among students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Triangulated qualitative data indicated improvements in children’s confidence, social interaction, and emotional well-being, further highlighting the holistic benefits of experiential outdoor learning. These findings suggest that FS offers a promising pedagogical approach for fostering inclusion in mainstream education. The study contributes to the growing empirical base on outdoor education by providing evidence of FS’s potential to support diverse learners, while also offering practical insights for educators and policymakers seeking to integrate nature-based learning within school curricula.
In this narrative literature review, we describe the physical and social-emotional preparation activities utilised by outdoor education providers to prepare their participants for their programs. We aimed to gather best practice evidence from the literature to inform Australian and international educators as they prepare future outdoor education participants. We used a specific narrative literature review approach to increase the rigour of findings to discuss the data from studies that met our inclusion criteria related to pre-outdoor-education-program preparation. As a result of this approach, we categorised the data into two main areas (physical preparation and social-emotional preparation) and discussed their findings. We describe the study’s implications, make recommendations for practitioners looking to incorporate preparatory activities into their pre-program activities, and make suggestions for future research in this area.
Childhood is a critical stage in the development of our individual identities. It is precisely the time when a child begins to become increasingly affected by two processes that may be acting in a manner that is inversely proportional to their educational needs: on the one hand, hyperconnectivity as a cultural reality in childhood and, on the other, a nature deficit. Against this backdrop, this article describes a research process designed to analyse the ludic and didactic use made in childhood of technology and the natural environment, further considering the role played by variables such as gender, age, and school year. This process is of a quantitative, non-experimental, and cross-sectional nature, adopting an exploratory-descriptive and correlational approach. The sample consists of 2,586 schoolchildren aged between 9 and 13. The findings reveal significant differences depending on gender: girls are more engaged with nature, while boys tend more toward technology. There are also differences between school years and the children’s ages, with a highlight being a steady decrease in the ludic use of nature and its appreciation as children grow older, especially between the ages of 10 and 12. The study suggests that schools may have a key role to play is reversing these trends, especially using active methodologies and curricular proposals that bring the experience of nature into the classroom. Finally, the discussion focuses on the importance of designing teaching practices that strike a balance between technology and nature with a view to fostering children’s sustainable and mindful development in the digital era.
As a Canadian outdoor educator, traveling with students in remote wild places is more complicated than ever. This complication is rooted in acknowledging Canada’s colonial history and the impact that history has had on Indigenous Peoples and land. The purpose of this paper is to share my evolving thinking as an outdoor educator regarding how outdoor education in wild spaces might be shaped, or reshaped, as an opportunity for reconciliation as defined in Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report. To do this, I venture beyond my academic comfort zone and borrow ideas from post-colonial literature and share a developing pathway for reconciliation in outdoor education (OE) that includes three segments: Experience, re-experience, and experience back. The goal of this pathway is to encourage and inspire outdoor educators to create purposeful OE encounters that acknowledge, examine, and challenge dominant colonial discourses that continue to be present in Canadian culture and society and to stimulate critical thought and conversation about how outdoor educators can contribute to reconciliation, particularly in settler colonial nations such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
Outdoor learning is widely assumed to potentiate social–emotional learning (SEL) in early childhood, yet rigorous cross-national randomized evidence remains limited. To address this gap, we conducted a multi-site, parallel-group, three-arm randomized trial in public preschools in Slovakia and Spain evaluating a 20-week nature-oriented SEL curriculum delivered predominantly indoors (≤ 1 h outdoors weekly) or enacted through planned outdoor learning (≥ 4 h/day outdoors) against routine pedagogy (control). The study included N = 272 participants: a child cohort (n = 118) randomized within country to indoor-SEL, outdoor-SEL, or control, and adult cohorts of teachers (n = 18) and parents (n = 136). The primary outcome was perceived prosocial behavior independently rated by teachers and parents using the Questionnaire to Assess Perceived Prosocial Behavior in Preschool Children (QSPBPCH) at pretest and posttest. Primary analyses used Group × Time mixed-design ANOVAs with Bonferroni-adjusted contrasts, complemented by linear mixed-effects models accounting for classroom clustering and country. Relative to control, both SEL arms showed greater pretest–posttest gains across rater groups, whereas the contrast between outdoor and indoor delivery formats was not statistically significant at posttest. A nature-oriented SEL curriculum appears feasible within public preschool systems and—whether enacted through outdoor learning or indoors—is associated with improvements in perceived prosocial behavior. The absence of a statistically significant contrast between delivery formats highlights methodological challenges in evaluating SEL interventions in early childhood contexts and underscores the need for robust and transferable measurement approaches capable of capturing contextual influences across educational settings.
Outdoor learning experiences (OLEs) are opportunities for K-12 students to engage in group activities focused on active learning activities in natural spaces led by field-based science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals. Thus, OLEs hold great promise in shifting perceptions of who does STEM and who one learns STEM among middle school aged students. Research on how OLEs uniquely influence girls’ perceptions of science and scientists remains limited as outdoor spaces are regarded as masculine; therefore, the present study measured 20 middle school aged girls’ perceptions of STEM-scientists while participating in a STEM-focused multiday OLE in the southwestern United States. Before and after participating in a three-day residential OLE focused on inquiry-based, STEM-focused, research activities, participants drew and described their understanding of a scientist using the Draw-A-Scientist-Test (DAST). The validated DAST checklist assessed four stereotypes of scientists (neutral, sinister, eccentric, and positive) and coding results suggested a decrease in all four stereotypical perceptions with the greatest decreases in neutral and eccentric tropes. Post OLE participation, participants reported their vision scientists working in outdoor settings and performing field work, suggesting that OLEs reduced stereotypical scientist perceptions and fostered more realistic views of scientists and their work. Augmentation of the DAST codebook is recommended to include “working outdoors” and “studying or observing natural settings or natural materials” to capture students’ shifting perceptions of scientists inspired from OLE interventions.
School Monarch gardens are distinct because of their dual purpose: contributing to Monarch and pollinator conservation while providing hands-on STEM-based educational opportunities within Kindergarten−12 education. Understanding how students in different school types and grades comprehend the habitat resources Monarchs and other pollinators need is crucial to ensuring these gardens function as effective educational tools. From 2021−2024, eleven schools in the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area, Oklahoma, USA participated in a pre–post drawing assessment study to quantitatively evaluate changes in student understandings of Monarch butterfly and pollinator habitat resources. Students drew a garden that is good for bees and butterflies before and after a Monarch garden was installed at their school. Drawings were scored using a rubric across multiple quantitative criteria, and changes in scores were analyzed using ANOVA and t-tests. A total of 193 paired pre- and post-garden drawings were submitted from four private, nature-based schools and seven public schools. All criteria increased in post-garden drawings, with the largest change observed in the variety/number of flowering plants. Nature-based and public schools scored similarly across most criteria, except that nature-based schools included greater numbers/varieties of insects. While all grade levels demonstrated gains in understanding pollinator needs, scores varied by grade on specific criteria, reflecting differences in curriculum and learning objectives. Overall, Monarch school gardens enhanced student understandings of the habitat resources pollinators require, demonstrating that gardens can be effective tools for ecological education and early engagement in pollinator conservation.
History is not just in the past, as it affects the present and future. In this sense, outdoor educators are living in history, especially when we teach in place, on Country. Acknowledging the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owners of unceded lands is a regular practice in Australia, and one that should be very familiar to outdoor educators. Such acknowledgment assumes some affinity with the perspectives of First Nations peoples. But how do we understand these perspectives? Histories are important here, not as events of the past, but as events that continue to impact human-human and human-nature relationships. This paper presents arguments made in the Brian Nettleton Lecture of 2023 delivered by John Quay, along with the practical application of these arguments undertaken by Belinda Dalziel in her planning and teaching of the Outdoor and Environmental Studies course within the senior school Victorian Certificate of Education. John and Belinda are both non-Indigenous educators responding to the call by First Nations educators to take on some of the responsibility and challenge of teaching in this area, which is so crucial for outdoor education and outdoor environments, for Country, in Australia.
This bibliometric review synthesizes 1,102 English research and review articles on “outdoor play”, “risky play”, and “adventurous play” indexed between 1980 and 2025 in Web of Science. Output spans 401 sources with annual growth rate of 9.08
As Outdoor Environmental Educators, we are engaged in experiences largely shaped through our interactions in/with the landscape. Human actions continue to pose existential threats. Young people find themselves caught in the Anthropocene, often with little resemblance of a ‘sense of place’. Parallel to this in Australia, we live in a settler context, in a Country of Countries alongside Indigenous people with collective lived experience of tens of thousands of years demonstrating unique and sustainable ways of being, doing and knowing. Arguments are emerging that Outdoor Environmental Education (OEE) should consider how to enact place-responsive pedagogies that seek to bridge the divide between young people and those places in which they are in/with. How OEE responds to calls to further embed natural and cultural history in our discipline is the focus of this research. Through paying close attention to avoid extractive, exploitative, or tokenistic cultural engagement we can shift and deepen our discipline specific approaches. This paper explores pedagogical approaches OEE may take in being place-responsive focusing on qualitative research methods with 16 participants from senior secondary college completing trips to Kakadu National Park, Australia. The study identifies that a relational worldview encourages epistemological and ontological sensibilities in students considering their own and others’ ways of being, doing and knowing. This study has identified a framework that can support a place-based model for learning about Indigenous cultures. In this paper, we highlight the model developed from these Kakadu experiences: after having spent Time in place, listening to Stories of place, students are Finding their own place.
