What is outdoor learning?

To care for the world, you need to love it. To love it, you need to be a part of it. To be a part of it, you need to spend lots of time out in it. In this way you can appreciate the world’s power and fragility. Children must be allowed to learn in the outdoor environment.

Experiential learning

©Helen Bilton and Anne Crook, Exploring outdoors ages 3-11. A guide for schools.

Inspiring wonder and awe

A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood.¹

However, there’s no avoiding that modern-day schooling, the pressures teachers face and resources at our disposal make developing learning experiences outdoors challenging. This course will acknowledge and address some of these challenges through examples but we can over-complicate outdoor learning when often simplicity is the best approach. You don’t need complex plans, special equipment or an extra qualification but you do need enthusiasm and willingness to embrace the outdoors as another learning space.

Taking a holistic approach

Learning outdoors is integral to learning about the environment because it enables children to use their whole body to engage in the experience, use all their senses to begin to understand it and start constructing their own framework for making sense of the world. Experiential learning sticks (ie, commits the learning to memory) and also develops resilience in children, enabling them to face challenges and overcome them. And finally, learning outdoors is about learning over time. To care for the environment you need to experience it daily on an ongoing basis.

You’ll explore the benefits of outdoor learning in more detail later in the course but are there any key benefits which come instantly to mind?

¹ p54 in Carson, R. (1998). A Sense of Wonder (Harper Collins), originally published in 1956.