Today was my penultimate placement shift at TreeZone. The morning started with a quick 20 minute training session on best practice for helping out customers on the course. I then shot the remaining pictures I needed for the packs and also took the opportunity to take a few of the staff hard at work. I met three more members of the team today, Annie, Grant and Ivan. It was a busy day so I did not get too much time to chat to them but I did speak to Annie briefly about her role at the outdoor learning centre, Lagganlia. She told me that they work very closely with Curriculum for Excellence to provide focused, residential experiences for schools.
I have also spent my evenings reading more on outdoor education and its various definitions. I have already identified some of the differences, in accepted definitions at least, between outdoor education and outdoor learning in some of my previous posts. However, as I have continued my work in the outdoors, I have had the opportunity to discuss with my colleagues what outdoor learning means for a variety of different people. I have put together the following breakdown based on those discussions and from the reading referenced at the end of this post.
I am going to use the term outdoor learning as the umbrella definition for all educational endeavours taking place in an outdoor context. I think it is necessary to dissect outdoor learning as having an understanding of the different apsects should help in creating more focused and targeted learning experiences that are both progressive and meaningful.
Outdoor education has long been the umbrella term but it has become synonymous with local authority projects tackling everything from behavioural problems to adult education, it brings forth thoughts of budgets, aims, targets and initiatives. Although a useful tool for targeting specific problems outdoor education, as a term at least, has become something quite specific.
Environmental awareness is another big area in outdoor learning and tends to focus on education people in how best to minimise our negative impact on the environment through managing waste, buying products with a lower carbon footprint and looking after the wildlife in our own communities. Environmental awareness can also drift into areas such as geography, geology and biology which brings me to another big area in outdoor learning, field studies. These would also include areas such as archaeology and tend to focus on categorising and quantifying our environment.
People involved in such subject areas may also find themselves in the exploring and adventuring business which I feel falls into the category of outdoor pursuits. These are the specific sets of skills required to tackle hostile environments and could be everything from rock-climbing and mountaineering to map-reading and bush-craft or so called survival skills. These are a combination of kinaesthetic, problem-solving and knowledge based skills. The latter in terms of knowledge such as how to spot a potential avalanche risk or where to forage edible food.
All these include a variety of life skills but I think it is harder to separate these from the areas mentioned already as all could include elements of planning, self motivation, reflection, discovery, resillience, team-work, leadership, team-building and problem solving. These character attributes and personal skills are certainly a very important part of education but they are really a part of every subject area and should be a natural component of any learning intention outdoors or otherwise.
Lastly, I would suggest that there is a sub-category to all these, the urban outdoor learning environments. Towns and cities have their own outdoor spaces to explore and understand and it could be argued that they have their own sets of outdoor pursuits, such as skateboarding, free-running, bmxing and even buildering (a form of outdoor climbing very much frowned upon!) I guess they might also have their own geologist, those that understand the complex architecture and street designs that make up our major towns and cities... but I might on a bit of a tangent with that one.
The main point I am trying to make is that outdoor learning is about more than just taking kids out for some fun outside, or on a field trip, or outside to do maths. It is about all these things and so much more, the world is happening outside and so to should our classrooms.
Gair, N. (1997) Outdoor Education - Theory and Practice. London: Cassell.
I have also spent my evenings reading more on outdoor education and its various definitions. I have already identified some of the differences, in accepted definitions at least, between outdoor education and outdoor learning in some of my previous posts. However, as I have continued my work in the outdoors, I have had the opportunity to discuss with my colleagues what outdoor learning means for a variety of different people. I have put together the following breakdown based on those discussions and from the reading referenced at the end of this post.
I am going to use the term outdoor learning as the umbrella definition for all educational endeavours taking place in an outdoor context. I think it is necessary to dissect outdoor learning as having an understanding of the different apsects should help in creating more focused and targeted learning experiences that are both progressive and meaningful.
Outdoor education has long been the umbrella term but it has become synonymous with local authority projects tackling everything from behavioural problems to adult education, it brings forth thoughts of budgets, aims, targets and initiatives. Although a useful tool for targeting specific problems outdoor education, as a term at least, has become something quite specific.
Environmental awareness is another big area in outdoor learning and tends to focus on education people in how best to minimise our negative impact on the environment through managing waste, buying products with a lower carbon footprint and looking after the wildlife in our own communities. Environmental awareness can also drift into areas such as geography, geology and biology which brings me to another big area in outdoor learning, field studies. These would also include areas such as archaeology and tend to focus on categorising and quantifying our environment.
People involved in such subject areas may also find themselves in the exploring and adventuring business which I feel falls into the category of outdoor pursuits. These are the specific sets of skills required to tackle hostile environments and could be everything from rock-climbing and mountaineering to map-reading and bush-craft or so called survival skills. These are a combination of kinaesthetic, problem-solving and knowledge based skills. The latter in terms of knowledge such as how to spot a potential avalanche risk or where to forage edible food.
All these include a variety of life skills but I think it is harder to separate these from the areas mentioned already as all could include elements of planning, self motivation, reflection, discovery, resillience, team-work, leadership, team-building and problem solving. These character attributes and personal skills are certainly a very important part of education but they are really a part of every subject area and should be a natural component of any learning intention outdoors or otherwise.
Lastly, I would suggest that there is a sub-category to all these, the urban outdoor learning environments. Towns and cities have their own outdoor spaces to explore and understand and it could be argued that they have their own sets of outdoor pursuits, such as skateboarding, free-running, bmxing and even buildering (a form of outdoor climbing very much frowned upon!) I guess they might also have their own geologist, those that understand the complex architecture and street designs that make up our major towns and cities... but I might on a bit of a tangent with that one.
The main point I am trying to make is that outdoor learning is about more than just taking kids out for some fun outside, or on a field trip, or outside to do maths. It is about all these things and so much more, the world is happening outside and so to should our classrooms.
Gair, N. (1997) Outdoor Education - Theory and Practice. London: Cassell.