Outdoor Education

This book explores the phenomenon of outdoor education, an approach that permits children from all backgrounds to explore environmental, sustainability, and other issues facing them and their communities. Organized around both the conceptual and the practical issues facing school leaders interested in outdoor education

This book reviews evidence and case studies on the effects of outdoor learning on teachers and learners. It shows how real-world learning outside the classroom contributes to unlocking the full potential of learners, demonstrating its benefits for academic learning, social competencies, personal and emotional development, psychological well-being, and physical activity and health. In addition, the book highlights how outdoor learning nurtures environmental awareness and helps learners to tackle current sustainability challenges. Its focus on high-quality learning makes it a unique contribution to the implementation of SDG 4.

There’s nothing like a trip to the great outdoors. As any avid camper, hiker, backpacker, or paddler knows, stepping out of the civilized “front country” for a few hours, days, or even weeks offers physical, mental, and spiritual regeneration unlike any other experience. But if you’re not already an outdoors enthusiast, where would you even start as an outdoor adventure? Why should you even start? Isn’t the outdoors an experience of “roughing it” with bugs, bears, and bad weather?

This book brings together an international group of authors to discuss the outdoor environmental education (OEE) theory and practice that educators can use to support teaching and learning in higher education. The book contents are organised around a recently established list of threshold concepts that can be used to describe the knowledge and skills that university students would develop if they complete a major in outdoor education.

This book explores contemporary developments in outdoor learning, where the outdoors is seen as the context rather than the subject of learning. Ranging from pathfinder pieces written by practitioners to rigorous research-based pieces of work, the book explores the growing interest in animals as the basis for wider learning strategies as well as drawing together a wide range of outdoor learning approaches for all ages.

This book explores contemporary developments in outdoor learning, where the outdoors is seen as the context rather than the subject of learning. Ranging from pathfinder pieces written by practitioners to rigorous research-based pieces of work, the book explores the growing interest in animals as the basis for wider learning strategies as well as drawing together a wide range of outdoor learning approaches for all ages. Within these two discrete sections the contributors, who are drawn from a wide range of practitioners, academics and researchers, describe and analyse innovative approaches that address the need to explore alternatives to current test-based approaches to education in the western world. The whole offers a contemporary, informative, alternative approach to outdoor learning for teachers, practitioners and students.