This research has embedded outdoor learning in Scottish national education policy and underpinned the training of 1,800 teachers in Scotland, Europe and other countries.
Outdoor learning in the UK has its roots in challenging outdoor adventure activities focused on encouraging young people to develop personal and social skills, such as teamwork and problem-solving.
Traditionally, these activities have tended to take place in residential centres that are located far from young peoples’ homes, often relying on the availability of specialist staff and equipment.
Research at Moray House School of Education has identified that outdoor learning has the potential to do much more than encourage such development, and can be facilitated in school grounds and local areas.
Outdoor learning can be rooted in local contexts, raising children’s awareness of environmental and sustainability issues, and closely tied to all aspects of the school curriculum. Maths, health and wellbeing, social sciences, and physical sciences lend themselves particularly well to learning in ‘authentic’, outside-the-classroom contexts.
Since the mid-1990s, outdoor learning researchers at Moray House School of Education (Simon Beames, Beth Christie, Peter Higgins, Robbie Nicol, John Telford and Hamish Ross) have been looking at opportunities in the delivery of regular, low-cost, cross-curricular outdoor learning and learning for sustainability.
Variously involving teachers, children, local authorities and government policymakers, their research has employed fieldwork, focus groups, interviews, literature reviews, and the development of theory.
In 2008, the team drew its findings together into Outdoor Journeys, a new and easily adaptable model for outdoor learning based on enabling children to learn about local people and places in active, engaging and contextualised ways.
The model (and a series of related resources) was based on a three-stage process
- questioning
- researching
- and sharing findings
Such was the success of Outdoor Journeys that the Esmée Fairbairn Trust funded two years of further action-research into outdoor learning in early secondary education in Scotland (A Natural Curriculum, 2011-13), resulting in the publication of a guidance document.
Findings revealed how students gained critical thinking in areas of the curriculum such as mathematics and geography, and further research demonstrated a link between outdoor learning and a tendency towards more sustainable lifestyle choices.