Research, reports and guidance on education outside the classroom and outdoor education, with a plain-English summary of each and a link to the original. New items are added every week.
The library began with Education Outside the Classroom: Applied Research Readings 2010–2017(McNatty & Boyes, University of Otago, 2017). Later items were found, summarised and checked with AI assistance using the same method: every reference is checked against the publisher's record, every summary against the published abstract, and only items rated high confidence by two independent relevance checks are published. Summaries are a guide: read the original before citing it.
95 items
This study presents the beach as a setting for sensory, open-ended play with seaweed, stones, ash and sound, valuing learning encounters that resist predetermined outcomes.
Australian educators co-designed an assessment tool for bush kinder that helped them understand children's learning in nature more deeply.
In three newly greened Paris primary schools, teachers often moved usual lessons outside without engaging with the place itself.
Eight Australian case studies describe three facilitator styles in nature play: nature pedagogues, nature guides and nature players.
Norwegian teachers made outdoor aquatic education meaningful by focusing on pupils' experiences, adapting activities and putting safety first, but large groups and limited time got in the way.
In New Zealand rock climbing and kayaking, students developed emotional intelligence through peer and adult support. Teachers and instructors played a key role in building a supportive culture.
'Curriculuming' treats the outdoor programme itself as the assessment task, using criteria for formative assessment, feedback and transfer of learning during the programme.
A narrative review gathers evidence on physical and social-emotional preparation for outdoor education participants, with recommendations for practitioners.
Outdoor educators 'live in history' when teaching on Country. This lecture and its classroom application show non-Indigenous educators taking up responsibility for that teaching.
This article argues that ethical outdoor learning needs more than managing emotional crises. It should weigh doing no harm, promoting wellbeing and participant autonomy, with trauma-informed care as a guiding framework.
Interviews with outdoor learning staff at three UK wetland centres show how Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can guide more accessible and inclusive programmes for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Outdoor educators are urged to keep questioning whether the comfort zone model and challenge by choice suit every participant.
The OTTER lab approach gives teachers a five-step structure for planning sustainability education outside the classroom: prepare, orientate, discover, make an impact, reflect.
Place-based educators in Michigan treated uncertainty as a source of creativity and responsiveness, using locally grounded 'vernacular' teaching to work against the limits of conventional schooling.
Experienced K–8 teachers used loose parts and flexible routines to connect outdoor play with curriculum goals, scaffolding both structured and unstructured play into guided learning.
Bringing wild pedagogies into Danish early childhood institutions revealed two 'shoots of change': altering the place of nature in practice, and carving out time for more open approaches.
Experienced Irish outdoor educators described five components of an outdoor learning pedagogy and four conditions needed to make it normal in primary schools.
Educators in an English nursery and primary school video-recorded their outdoor teaching and reflected on it. They theorised about their role in supporting children's autonomy and discussed ways of combining outdoor and indoor learning.
A rapid evidence assessment of 44 studies found that experiential learning had an overall positive effect on the academic achievement of children aged 4–14.
Staff at one Irish primary school described Forest School as promoting children's connection to nature, offering a distinctive space for social-emotional development, and broadening the expression of teacher identity.
An ethnographic study of how Forest School teachers build children's connections to forest places through the interplay of materials, meaning, time and space.
This study reframes digital technology in outdoor education as something learners are entangled with, and suggests video-making can shape outdoor learning in new ways.
Outdoor environmental educators described sharing agency with students and place as complex, ongoing work that disrupts the traditional classroom hierarchy. The authors argue it can be a pathway to empowering students as agents of their own learning.
Ethnographic work in four Australian bush kinders shows how educators can observe children's play and use it to build their understanding of, and affinity with, nature.