Falling into LINE: school strategies for overcoming challenges associated with learning in natural environments (LINE)

ABSTRACT

As the benefits of outdoor learning have become of increasing interest to the education sector, so the importance of understanding and overcoming challenges associated with this pedagogy has gained greater significance. The Natural Connections Demonstration Project recruited primary, secondary, and special schools across south-west England with a view to stimulating and supporting ‘learning in the natural environment’ across the region. This research paper examines qualitative data obtained from case study visits to 12 of these schools. The results from teaching staff interviews and focus groups show that schools face many and varied challenges to embedding outdoor learning, and a raft of strategies are presented for tackling these challenges and integrating learning in the natural environment into much of the current curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Outdoor learning
• learning in the natural environment
• learning outside the classroom
• barriers
• natural connections
• curriculum learning
• school grounds

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Sue Waite http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2561-612X

Notes

1 Where categories within these themes are illustrated quantitatively, the numbers relate to the references made to these issues during the case study interviews, rather than to the number of interviewees, hence some figures are higher than the total number of people.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural England, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Historic England, with further funding for the analyses associated with this article provided by a Plymouth Institute of Education award.