‘A good thing about this is probably that there’s been more freedom to try some things out’ - Danish teachers’ experience of teaching outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

After a COVID-19-induced lockdown in the spring of 2020 in Denmark, the reopening of schools involved bringing the teaching outdoors. This offered a unique opportunity to study the experiences of teachers not used to working outdoors. In light of Thomas Guskey's teacher development theory, these experiences are investigated in a qualitative in-depth study of 12 teachers. Despite starting with different attitudes towards teaching outdoors, the teachers agreed that the prevailing content outdoors had to be curricular, that the preparation had been cumbersome, and that they could teach more from their own mindset outdoors. Furthermore, all participating teachers expressed that they wanted to continue teaching outdoors more post-COVID than before. However, it is difficult to discern the significance of the outdoor teaching specifically, as there were numerous aspects of the schoolday that were changed in the reopening. The results seem promising for the provision of teaching outdoors post-COVID.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• education outside the classroom
• teacher development
• teaching outdoors
• udeskole

Geolocation information

This research was conducted in Denmark, Scandinavia, Europe.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the teachers who graciously gave their time to be interviewed. Thank you to the gatekeepers, the municipal consultants, and the principals for introducing me to the teachers. Thank you, too, to my student assistant Pernille Kier for transcribing the interviews, and to Mads Bølling for carefully reading and commenting on the draft paper. This work was funded by VIA University College.

Disclosure statement

The author declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author is a prominent developer within the field of udeskole, especially in a Danish context. Thus, the interest and belief in outdoor teaching is strong, and may have affected the approach to the field and research. Nevertheless, the author is also aware of the dangers of pre-assumptions, and speaks for a more critical view on the positive commonalities involving outdoor teaching.