Outdoor learning key to better student behaviour and learning

Claire Halliday

Embracing learning outside the classroom can lead to better behavioural outcomes and provide richer educational experiences for all children.

Professor Tonia Gray is a senior researcher in eco-pedagogies and outdoor experience-based education at Western Sydney University’s Centre for Educational Research. She has written extensively on nature-based practices in teacher education and has been an advocate of infusing outdoor and ‘green’ and ‘blue’ learning experiences into Australia’s National Curriculum renewal process.

“Outdoor learning is not new, just newly important,” she says.

By incorporating activities including excursions, outdoor education and community projects, educators who offer opportunities for learning outside the classroom can help students gain practical, hands-on experiences that helps enhance their physical, mental and social wellbeing.

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While ongoing research shows that learning outside the classroom can foster healthy life habits, promote positive teamwork and help students develop deeper critical thinking, experts say that many schools – particularly secondary schools – lack the facilities and resources to deliver quality outdoor learning programs for students.

“Evidence-based research over the past few decades shows that learning outside the classroom can improve engagement and classroom behaviour, enhance academic achievement scores and cognitive function, and positively impact the health and wellbeing of students,” says Gray.

She believes this is “particularly true for students who are reluctant to engage in the traditional indoor classroom environment or even showing behaviours associated with school refusal”.

“Some children are better suited to ‘embodied learning’, as they are kinesthetic learners,” says Gray.

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“When afforded the opportunity to learn in outdoor environment they can undertaking self-directed exploration and experimentation.”

Tackling sedentary shift in schools for better health outcomes

As an educator for more than four decades, Gray says her personal observations of the current school system show “a marked shift towards indoor classrooms, which are often sedentary and online”.

Collectively, she says this has an adverse impact on childhood obesity levels, “coupled with a marked increase in anxiety and a decline in interpersonal skills, as witnessed by online bullying”.

Gray says exploring alternatives by providing greater opportunities for outdoor learning at Australian high schools will offer students myriad benefits.

“Outdoor experiential learning engages children in practical, active learning experiences in natural environments and sometimes risk-taking settings beyond the four walls of the traditional school classroom.”

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Claire Halliday has an extensive career as a full-time writer - across book publishing, copywriting, podcasting and feature journalism - for more than 25 years. She lives in Melbourne with children, two border collies and a grumpy Burmese cat. Contact: claire.halliday[at]educationdaily.au