5. To encourage schools to utilise their outdoor
space and provide opportunities for children
to actively engaged in learning, outside the
constraints of the classroom.
Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
7. Easier to manage
behaviour indoors
Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
Teacher can keep
children on ‘task’
when seated at tables
Curriculum
constraints
Monitoring and
evidencing
procedures
OFSTED/
Accountability/Data
Lack of confidence
to teach beyond
the classroom
Some Perceived barriers
9. Create a network
Support whole school
development
Can be tailored to meet
specific needs
Collaborate with
professionals
Active learning
Well-being and
Involvement
Sustainable approach
10. Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach
Outdoors Ltd 2023
11. • Training and support over a 12-month period.
• Outdoor leader training leading to Teach Outdoors Teacher
Status
• Recognition of a whole school commitment with the option
of becoming a Teach Outdoors School.
• Core subject leader training – English, maths and science
• Access to CPD calendar, which is developed with
consideration to the needs and requirements of the schools.
• Access to a growing online bank of curriculum linked
resources for English, maths and science.
Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
What is included?
12. Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
13. Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
14. Research
Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
Dr Tanya Richardson - Senior Lecturer in Education at
The University of Northampton
15. The aim is to:
• Evaluate the effectiveness of a pilot project
designed to encourage and support outdoor
learning within primary schools .
In order to meet the above aim, the objectives of
the research are to:
• Assess confidence and skills of teachers to take
learning outdoors, both before and after the
intervention
• Monitor the number and nature of lessons taught
outdoors throughout the project
• Observe and analyse children’s involvement in
learning within the outdoor learning environment.
• Observe and analyse children’s wellbeing within
the outdoor learning environment well-being
• Make recommendations for future practice in the
development of outdoor learning.
Research aims
and objectives
16. Research methods
• Questionnaires
• Observations and field notes
• Ferre Leavers Leuven Scales to measure the involvement and well-
being of a select group of children – completed weekly for 4 weeks
then revisited 4 months later.
• Focus groups – one for children and one for teaching team
Well being in Environmental Education Conference - Teach Outdoors Ltd 2023
18. Next steps:
• Collect data
• Building case studies
• Developing the network
• Collaborating with
professionals, organisations
and charities
• Investigating funding routes
for schools
• Share the findings
• Raising awareness
Good morning and thank you for joining me to consider a whole school approach to outdoor learning.
Let's start by asking the question , where do children learn? I ask this question because as a teacher I went from teaching y5/6 to Reception class and it was the same question I asked myself. In early years we were active learners and this often happened outdoors.
I naturally related this to the older children I had taught and wondered when do children change, when do they start learning by sitting at desks?
It's quite common that from the age of 6 our learning environments become more static.
But is this really the best way for them us learn?
My name is Jo Clanfield and as I just mentioned, I began questioning the way children are taught when I moved from teaching Yr5/6 to R. It was a huge shock to my system moving down the school, but it was the first time I stopped and thought ‘wow’ this is the way children SHOULD learn. I realised that outdoor areas provided so many learning opportunities and wanted to explore this further. Over the next few years I became a fs and beach sch leader and I began working with the older children to provide them with outdoor learning opportunities. I saw first hand the huge difference it made as the children who sometimes struggled to access learning indoors often became more engaged and appeared happier when learning outdoors.
But I soon realised there was a problem. There was only one of me!
I would be asked, ‘Jo can you take my class outdoors?’ by other teachers.
But this wasn’t rocket science. If I could do it why couldn’t they?
I realised that teachers sometimes lacked the confidence, knowledge and permission to take the learning outdoors.
So Teach Outdoors was formed. This way I could support lots of schools to take the learning outdoors.
My aim was to encourage schools to utlise their outdoor space for children to actively engage in learning.
But it wasn’t long before I realized there was another problem.
There was a huge variation on what people referred to as OL and this was stopping teachers using it as a teaching tool. Was it forest school? Did you need a qualification or a woodland?
So, I started raising awareness of outdoor learning as any learning that takes place outdoors, at anytime, by utilizing space and breaking down the confinements of the classroom walls and making appropriate curriculum links.
I often found that Outdoor Leads were left feeling that they were trying to pull everyone with them to develop outdoor learning or they were on there own. Some of the reasons for this were often the perceived barriers that teachers had, such as:
It is easier to manage behaviour indoors, they are wild when I take them outside
There’s too much to do I can’t fit it in my timetable, it's a nice to have
I don’t know how to do it, You’ve had the training I haven’t
What will OFSTED say if they are playing outdoors, how do I show evidence of learning.
It’s easier to see if they are working on task inside and I can keep my eye on them, they are too easily distracted to learn outside.
I also found that if that one member of staff left then the outdoor provision went too. With all this in mind I created a model that would lead to the sustainable development of outdoor learning and I was lucky enough to get the support from the University of Northampton’s Changemaker Hub.
It was an outdoor learning development model that would:
Create a network
Support whole school development
Be tailored to meet specific needs and related to SDP
Collaborate with professionals
Provide examples of active learning opportunities
Highlight the importance of Well-being and Involvement
Develop a Sustainable approach
And we had 6 Primary schools including one alternative provision who were eager to take part.
So, working with a fantastic team we began developing the support and resources needed to help schools to develop their outdoor learning provision.
Each school has access to:
Training and support over a 12-month period.
Outdoor leader training leading to Teach Outdoors Teacher Status
Recognition of a whole school commitment with the option of becoming a Teach Outdoors School.
Core subject leader training – English, maths and science
Access to CPD calendar, which is developed with consideration to the needs and requirements of the schools.
Access to a growing online bank of curriculum linked resources for English, maths and science.
We mapped a schools journey for the year:
Onboarding, identifying the vision of outdoor learning for the individual schools and access to the online network
Training – leadership training to help support making a change within the school and also outdoor learning training where the leaders were given the knowledge skills and resources to support the development of outdoor learning in their school.
The Outdoor Lead begins to cascade the relevant information to their team.
The English, maths and science subject leaders access training to cascade information to their team.
Involving the wider school community and general community
Reviewing and reflecting on progress and providing additional support.
Evidence and recognition of the Outdoor Lead and the whole school commitment.
The development of the online platform has provided a community space for networking with other schools, storage for training and the online bank of curriculum linked resources. I wanted to develop something that was inclusive and easy to use. Just because a child is in Y6 it doesn’t mean they can access the y6 curriculum, so we created outdoor activity ideas that are linked to a progressions of skills. For example, this one here is for multiplication and division and you may be able to see the 3 levels of progressive skills.
A headteacher I used to work for always said to me, ‘this is lovely Jo, but how does it help the scores on the doors’, I knew I needed to show the impact, so I enlisted the help of Dr Tanya Richardson to help and advise me how to collect data to show the impact.
We wanted to evaluate how effect the pilot was at supporting outdoor learning in schools.
To do this we decided to:
Assess the confidence and skills of the teachers to take learning outdoors
Monitor the number and nature of lesson taught outdoors
Observe and analyses the children's involvement and well being within the outdoor environment and compare this to indoors.
Make recommendations for future practice in developing outdoor learning in schools.
In order to do this we will be using:
Questionnaires
Observations and field notes
Ferre Leavers Leuven Scales to measure the involvement and well-being of a select group of children – completed weekly for 4 weeks then revisited 4 months later.
Focus groups – one for children and one for teaching team
You've heard about the why and how the whole school approach was developed, so let's now here the views from a pilot school.
The schools only started in September and it’s great to see how much impact the pilot is already having on not only the children but the teachers and parents. There is a real buzz, however it’s also important to recognise that there have been some barriers and negatives, but we encourage schools to share these and try to encourage a solution focused community, whilst looking at previous research such as understanding the importance of transitions from Leigh Hoath’s effective characteristics of learning
Our next steps are to continue to
Collect and review the data
Build on the case study evidence
Develop the network
Collaborate with professionals, organisations and charities – there are some amazing people doing some wonderful work and together, collaboratively we can make a bigger impact. If there is anyone out there who feels they could add to the offer of support for schools please get in contact.
Investigating funding routes for schools
Share the findings
(click) Raise awareness through events such as the Outdoor Learning Conference, which we are running on the 13th June at Northampton University.
Thank you very much for listening and I invite any questions.
