Outdoor Education: a Tool for
Experiential Learning
By Christian Devine
Saint Michael's College
As the reader, I would like for you to think back all the way
to your middle school experience and try to place yourself back into your old
shoes. At that point in time, as a young adolescent, I am certain you were in
some state of unrest, and this had a lot to do with where you were
developmentally. Middle school are the formative years of one’s childhood where
they develop changes in their social, cognitive, and physical health, and when
all of this happens at once, it can create quite the stressful situation for a
young adolescent. According to James Fenwick, middle school is the most crucial
period in an individual’s life when it comes to synthesizing a rational, positive,
personal value system, something that is crucial as one advances through the
next few phases of life.
One aspect of middle school that I believe gets looked over
by administrators and school boards in the age of standardized tests is the
practice of Outdoor Education for middle grade students. Outdoor education
provides educators a way of teaching and learning that embarks on the vision of
21st century learning, and that is to provide students with
meaningful, experiential opportunities, rather than just teaching the content
through a certain process. About a century ago, John Dewey emphasized that
experiential learning is an essential ingredient in meaningful and
comprehensive student learning. I would say that is true considering when I
look back at my middle school experience, most of the activities that I can
recall were all outside; whether it was a team wide ropes course day, reading
aloud under the sun instead of in the classroom, or even if it was our science
teacher bringing us out to the parking lot with two metal baseball bats to show
that light moves quicker than sound. There are an overwhelming amount of
positive benefits of outdoor education for young adolescents, but this list,
developed by Hood River Middle School, provides five reasons why they choose to
do an outdoor classroom excursion every year.
5 Benefits of Outdoor Schooling- Observed from Hood River Middle
School
1. It Builds Community
2. It Raises Expectations and Standards
3. It Increases Connection
4. It Builds Culture
5. It Develops Positive Feelings and Memories
about schooling and the outdoors
One other benefit of outdoor education that I find
particularly intriguing from a study done by Joan James and Theresa Williams in
the Journal of Experiential Education is how valuable the experience is for the
students that tend to struggle with traditional school tasks and have developed
an apathetic attitude to schooling and learning over the years. It has been
shown that these students and students alike are more likely to be leaders of
their peers in an experiential setting. This practice alone allows all students
to be feel empowered in a school setting, especially when done around their
fellow students and in front of their teachers, thus creating empirical
benefits for all students as they grow to become citizens of the world. Outdoor
education also allows for students who are not particularly familiar with
nature to gain a greater understanding and appreciation for nature. This not
only enhances the student’s instrumental value for nature, but it also
encompasses their intrinsic value for nature, thus developing more
environmentally aware students; all through simply allowing opportunities for
outdoor education to be a part of a student’s education.
The problems that educators who advocate for outdoor
education programs for their students face is distinctive to its own field in
one way, but in another way the same problem that all educators face in the age
of standardized tests. According to Quay in the work Outdoor Education and School Curriculum Distinctiveness: More than
Content, More than Process, the challenge for outdoor education is
distinctive because there is not a universal body of knowledge or subject
matter for the outdoor education field. If educators worked to develop a broad
framework of what an outdoor education program should look like, within the
context of the local community, then educational institutions, especially
public schools, would be more likely to begin to implement more outdoor,
experiential learning opportunities for their students. The true problem lies
below curriculum and content and is in fact shared by mostly all educators, and
that is the desire to provide students with more experiential learning that
brings the material to life. One question that is raised by school officials
when it comes to establishing an outdoor education program is how outdoor
education will effect schooling outcomes. Outdoor education programs have been
seen to enhance personal and group development goals, but none of the studies
done yet has proven it directly schooling outcomes. Until outdoor education
advocates find creative ways of being outdoors that are measureable in today’s
world of standards, I am sure more and more outdoor education programs will
arise in order to enhance schooling outcomes.
As a history major and with the hopes of becoming a social
studies teacher someday, it will be challenging to find ways to implement my
lessons in the outdoors. One article that I came across earlier this year was
how one fifth grade teacher at a local elementary school next to my hometown
reenacts the American Revolutionary War with his students outside. This teacher
has found a method of creating ways of being for students while they study
history, which has proven to be beneficial for all students and their learning.
He gives students an actual role to play in the American Revolution, thus
empowering them to want to find out more about the character they are
representing and the relationship their historical figures have with others in
the class. The link to the article is attached below.
Outdoor education also has the ability to create more
environmentally aware students, something that is very important for 21st
century learning as we all move forward in the age of environmental degradation.
Through this, it also has the ability to create opportunities for
service-learning in the community, whether it’s a beach cleanup day in the
spring or constructing a garden. The
following link has ten ideas for outdoor education catered to young
adolescents, with all of the activities linked to proven practice. The
activities are more designed to cover topics of environmental education, but
all of the ideas could be twisted around in some form or another to cover
topics in most of the subject areas.
There is no debate that outdoor education
produces great personal and group developmental outcomes, but when outdoor
education programs are instituted correctly, they find ways to connect the
classroom setting to the field and then back into the classroom, thus enhancing
educational outcomes for students, as well. Outdoor educators and advocates
create ways of being outside of the classroom through the content and process
established within the classroom setting. Also seen in the link above, outdoor
education provides the opportunity for service learning. Many activities done
outdoors can have a huge impact on the communities’ environment, for example
cleaning up liter in heavily trashed areas. This fresh perspective on outdoor education
does not put the subject itself in a box, but rather is viewed as a broad
program that finds ways to implement classroom content to the outdoors and also
providing locally contextualized learning that would be beneficial to a
majority of students. In my view, this could be seen as a program that works
with classroom teachers on finding engaging opportunities for students, or also
a program that provides curricular or extracurricular time dedicated to outdoor
education areas that may relate to the community.
The youtube links below are all
videos that I found particularly interesting when studying the topic of outdoor
education. The first two videos discuss outdoor learning spaces at schools and
how to best implement them for learning. The last video is an important TedTalk
that I believe all parents and teachers should watch regarding the relationship
that young adolescents of today have with the outdoors, and the importance of
getting school children outside.
Get Hooked On Nature
Sources:
Becker, M.
(2016, April 19). 5 Benefits of Outdoor Education. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/5-benefits-of-outdoor-education-michael-becker
Quay, J. "Outdoor Education and School Curriculum
Distinctiveness: More than Content, More than Process." Journal of Outdoor &
Environmental Education 19.2
(2016): 42-50. Eue.
Mcgowan, A. "Impact of One-Semester Outdoor Education
Programs on Adolescent Perceptions of Self-Authorship." Journal of Experiential Education 39.4 (2016): 386-411. Eue.
James, J. and Williams, T. "School-Based Experiential
Outdoor Education: A Neglected Necessity." Journal of Experiential Education 40.1 (2017): 58-71. Eue
Elena, Moldovan. "The Influence of Outdoor Education
Activities on the Young People's Psycho Motile Development. Gymnasium: Scientific Journal of
Education, Sports & Health 16
(2015): 137-50. SPORTDiscus
with Full Text.
Bricker, Lara.
"Brentwood teacher brings American Revolution to life." Seacoastonline.com.
Exeter News Letter, 02 Feb. 2017. Web.
<http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20170202/brentwood-teacher-brings-american-revolution-to-life>.
Fenwick,
James J. "Insights into the Middle School Years." Educational
Leadership. Association for Supervision and Curriculum, Apr. 1977. Web.
<http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_197704_fenwick.pdf>.
