Balancing technology and outdoor learning: Implications for early childhood teacher educators

The integration of technology in the classroom has become commonplace in early childhood education;however, promoting outdoor learning is not as emphasized. A wealth of research has documented how young children learn and develop while engaging with technology or outdoor play, but limited literature exists on balancing these learning experiences to support children's developmental outcomes. The present paper seeks to review current literature on the effects of technology and outdoor learning on young children's development. Building off of the relevant literature, this paper will provide recommendations for early childhood teacher educators to guide teachers in training on balancing appropriate technology use and outdoor learning. Given the COVID-19 global pandemic, teaching implications regarding balancing technology and outdoor learning are also addressed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

‘COVID couldn't catch him there': can outdoor learning benefit primary school-aged children after a global health crisis?

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pupils and the potential value of outdoor learning (OL) as a strategy to overcome some of the challenges educators face in helping their pupils get ‘back on track'. Interviews with nine primary school staff in the South West of England explored the impact of the pandemic on pupil wellbeing, academic attainment, friendships/social skills, and behaviour. We report on the effectiveness of OL in this context. Findings indicate that OL is being deployed as a useful post-pandemic pedagogical tool. Barriers to consistently implementing OL as a teaching strategy are discussed. © 2023 ASPE.

Place-based education–a systematic review of literature

Place based education (PBE) is a pedagogical approach that emphasises the connection between a learning process and the physical place in which teachers and students are located. It incorporates the meanings and the experiences of place in teaching and learning, which can extend beyond the walls of the school. PBE regained significant attention with the early 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused large scale school closures globally and forced the rapid adoption of alternative learning environments, including teaching and learning outdoors, and learning from home. This systematic review aims to analyse English language research on PBE published in peer reviewed journals in the last twenty years. We map the themes included in this research corpus, highlight the geographical and subject specific topics where PBE is analysed, and categorise the themes that emerged from the research, according to Ardoin and colleagues' model of PBE dimensions. (Ardoin et al. [2012]. Exploring the dimensions of place: A confirmatory factor analysis of data from three ecoregional sites. Environmental Education Research, 18(5), 583–607. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2011.640930). As educators, scholars and policymakers in many countries increasingly seek to integrate PBE into curricula, a broad understanding and status check of current research directions will help steer future studies of PBE, as well as help guide education policy and practice. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Art education through the sustainable design of learning spaces

Art education is a valuable tool for achieving quality education by fostering creativity and an appreciation of learning and culture. Well-designed learning spaces are conducive to art learning. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted the author to review the design of learning spaces employed in previous pandemics and other outdoor learning spaces developed over time. A project was carried out at the university level with future secondary school art teachers to design a sustainable art learning space as a multidisciplinary exercise, combining art, architecture and design. Solutions were analysed across multiple criteria. The results demon-strate the suitability of the proposed activity to promote critical creativity among students in Tenerife in the Canary Islands. This type of project in art education is essential for academics and educators so that they become involved in sustainabil-ity issues so present in contemporary life. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

MOTEMO-OUTDOOR: ensuring learning and health security during the COVID-19 pandemic through outdoor and online environments in higher education.

The restriction measures put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic posed notable challenges for formal teaching-learning processes because they had to be adapted to ensure health security. An active learning programme applied to three environments (indoors, outdoors, and online) was tested with 273 undergraduate university students in a within-subjects experimental study. Each student was assigned to two indoor and two outdoor seminars, with a subsample (n = 30) also participating in online seminars implemented in response to the university's lockdown protocols. The learning experience and learning conditions were evaluated through six dimensions: learning, evaluative impact, hedonic experience, technical conditions, environmental conditions, and health security. Outdoor seminars were more effective than indoor seminars in terms of the learning experience, with greater differences in hedonic experience, while the indoor seminars were rated more highly than the outdoor seminars in terms of learning conditions, with a larger difference in the environmental conditions. No differences were found between online and face-to-face environments in terms of the learning experience, even though the online environment yielded better scores in the learning conditions. Apparently, this adaptation to both outdoor and online contexts through active methodologies allows overcoming of technical, environmental, and teaching limitations and improves health security, while ensuring a good learning experience and added flexibility to teaching-learning processes. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10984-023-09456-y.

School-based outdoor education and teacher subjective well-being: An exploratory study

Can school-based outdoor education (OE) benefit teachers' well-being? Multiple studies have reported the positive impact of OE on students' well-being and the benefits of contact with nature for adults. However, a literature review revealed no research on the impact of OE on teachers' well-being. This study explores the possible relationships between OE and preschool and primary school teachers' subjective well-being (SWB) in Quebec, Canada, during COVID-19. A survey measuring teacher SWB was conducted;381 teachers responded, 164 practiced OE, and 217 did not. The questionnaire results indicated that teachers who practice OE have significantly higher SWB than their colleagues (d = 0.21 to d = 0.36). However, only a limited positive correlation was found between teacher SWB and the number of times teachers practice OE (rho = 0.184). This study suggests that school-based OE is positively related to teacher SWB and therefore has the potential to benefit teachers and students alike.

Meaningful Movement towards Campus-Based Outdoor Learning: Characterizing Pre-Scenery with Stakeholder Perspective

This study seeks to characterize what matters to stakeholders as a school moves towards campus-based outdoor learning. Results from a survey (n=87) demonstrate stakeholder alignment in relation to a longstanding outdoor education movement and emerging movements responding to COVID-19. Discussion considers the polylogic of local communities that work to inspire, enable, and sustain commitments to campus-based outdoor learning. © ISLS.

Preparing for the next pandemic: adopt, adapt or improve?

This article offers the risky proposition of forecasting the future. The often paraphrased quote of Peter Drucker, famous European management guru, applies here. He was fond of pointing out how predicting the future can be likened to driving backwards down a dark and isolated country road at night with no lights, while looking out the back window via the rear view mirror. Instead, his wisdom suggested inventing the very future we want. We had best start now. Despite COVID-19 persisting in many countries, this article shares tactics from several strategic approaches to preparing for the next pandemic: accept the current practices (adopt), modify to suit new conditions (adapt), or find a different and better way (improve). The author favours improve.

Whose voices? Whose knowledge? Children and young people’s learning about climate change through local spaces and indigenous knowledge systems

This article reflects on collaborative research undertaken in Dawkins Park Reserve, NSW, Australia. The aim of the collaboration was to develop a local Indigenous cultural and educational outdoor precinct. Participants involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous teachers and primary (Year 6) and secondary (Year 7) school students from three government schools and one catholic school. Fostering student knowledge of, and stewardship about, the reserve’s ecological biodiversity specific to climate change effects over time was the desired outcome. In this article, we share the successes and key challenges of using this park as a case study for outdoor learning as a case study for outdoor learning about climate change in an authentic, localised setting, and the contributions of Indigenous cultural and scientific knowledge to the development of the students’ understanding. Questionnaires and focus group discussions were undertaken with 174 students, while seven teachers engaged in focus group discussions. Quantitative data supported the significant increase in learning enjoyment outside the classroom and improved understanding of climate change at a local level. Conversely, departmental policy and COVID were identified as constraints for regular off-campus learning. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Balancing technology and outdoor learning: Implications for early childhood teacher educators

The integration of technology in the classroom has become commonplace in early childhood education;however, promoting outdoor learning is not as emphasized. A wealth of research has documented how young children learn and develop while engaging with technology or outdoor play, but limited literature exists on balancing these learning experiences to support children’s developmental outcomes. The present paper seeks to review current literature on the effects of technology and outdoor learning on young children’s development. Building off of the relevant literature, this paper will provide recommendations for early childhood teacher educators to guide teachers in training on balancing appropriate technology use and outdoor learning. Given the COVID-19 global pandemic, teaching implications regarding balancing technology and outdoor learning are also addressed.

Las aulas fuera del colegio. Aprendizajes docentes de tres experiencias educativas en un período singular (Classrooms outside the school. Lessons for teachers from three educational experiences during exceptional times)

The role played by children's motor skills, socialisation and the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of a more outward-looking education. Linked to this, we can identify two other less obvious pandemics: sedentary lifestyles and social isolation. This article presents the results of three studies involving several educational experiences during this unique period between the academic years 2019/20 and 2021/22. It provides a voice to the protagonists: schoolchildren (n=123), educators (n=14) and families (n=128), to understand their experiences and expectations of active and outdoor based education in the different settings in which this took place during the period: the playground, the home, the street, the outdoors and indoor classrooms. As a result, the impact of confinement, both at home and school, on childhood as well as the value of utilising the outdoors and nature as an educational space become clear. We can verify that barriers can be broken down and that outdoor education can overcome difficulties when the teachers set their minds to it. Some of these difficulties are related to a certain reluctance to go outside the classroom, despite scientific evidence indicating that we are safer against COVID-19 in outdoor spaces. This contradiction seems to stem from an excess of zeal and liability, especially on the part of education authorities, which prevented or hindered outdoor education while taking great care to establish strict health prevention measures inside schools. It ends with a message of optimism and realism on the part of educators, who now have the certainty that this pandemic has shown us the great value of outdoor learning. Alternate : El papel que ha jugado la motricidad infantil, la socialización y el aire libre durante la pandemia del coronavirus ha puesto de manifiesto la importancia de una educación más abierta al exterior. Asociadas a esta, podemos apreciar otras dos pandemias menos evidentes: el sedentarismo y el aislamiento social. Este artículo muestra el resultado de tres estudios vinculados a diferentes experiencias educativas durante este singular periodo situado entre los cursos 2019/20 y el 2021/22. Se da voz a sus protagonistas: escolares (n=123), educadores (n=14) y familias (n=128), con la finalidad de conocer sus experiencias y expectativas sobre una educación activa y al aire libre en las diferentes aulas por las que ha transcurrido este periodo: el patio, el hogar, la calle, la naturaleza y las aulas interiores. Como resultado, se pone de manifiesto el impacto que tanto el confinamiento domiciliario como el escolar tiene sobre la infancia y el valor del aprovechamiento educativo de los espacios al aire libre y en la naturaleza. Podemos comprobar que las barreras se derriban y la educación al aire libre logra superar las dificultades cuando los educadores se lo proponen. Algunas de estas dificultades están relacionadas con ciertas resistencias a salir fuera del aula, a pesar de las evidencias científicas que indican que los espacios más seguros ante la COVID-19 están fuera. Esta incoherencia parece tener origen en el exceso de celo y responsabilidad, manifestado especialmente por la administración educativa que impedía o dificultaba la educación al aire libre mientras se esmeraba por establecer férreas normas para la prevención en el interior de los colegios. Finaliza con un mensaje de optimismo y realismo por parte de los educadores, quienes tienen la certeza de que esta pandemia nos ha mostrado el gran valor de la educación en la naturaleza.Alternate :O papel desempenhado pelas habilidades motoras, socialização e atividades ao ar livre das crianças durante a pandemia de coronavírus destacou a importância de uma educação mais aberta ao mundo exterior. Associado a isso, podemos ver duas outras pandemias menos óbvias: o sedentarismo e o isolamento social. Este artigo mostra o resultado de três estudos ligados a diferentes experiências educativas durante este período único entre os anos letivos 2019/ 0 e 2021/22. Dá-se voz aos seus protagonistas: escolares (n=123), educadores (n=14) e famílias (n=128), para conhecer as suas experiências e expectativas sobre uma educação ativa e ao ar livre nas diferentes salas pelas quais este período decorreu: o pátio, a casa, a rua, a natureza e as salas de aula interiores. Como resultado, destaca-se o impacto que o confinamento domiciliar e escolar têm nas crianças e o valor do uso educacional dos espaços ao ar livre e da natureza. Podemos ver que as barreiras são quebradas e a educação ao ar livre consegue superar as dificuldades quando os educadores se dedicam a isso. Algumas dessas dificuldades estão relacionadas a certa resistência em sair da sala de aula, apesar das evidências científicas indicarem que os espaços mais seguros diante da COVID-19 são os do lado de fora. Essa inconsistência parece ter origem no excesso de zelo e responsabilidade, manifestado especialmente pela administração educacional que impediu ou dificultou a educação ao ar livre ao mesmo tempo em que se esforçava para estabelecer regras rígidas de prevenção dentro das escolas. Termina com uma mensagem de otimismo e realismo dos educadores, que estão certos de que esta pandemia nos mostrou o grande valor da educação na natureza.

Classrooms outside the school. Lessons for teachers from three educational experiences during exceptional times

The role played by children’s motor skills, socialisation and the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the importance of a more outward-looking education. Linked to this, we can identify two other less obvious pandemics: sedentary lifestyles and social isolation.This article presents the results of three studies involving several educational experiences during this unique period between the academic years 2019/20 and 2021/22. It provides a voice to the protagonists: schoolchildren (n=123), educators (n=14) and families (n=128), to understand their experiences and expectations of active and outdoor based education in the different settings in which this took place during the period:the playground, the home, the street, the outdoors and indoor classrooms.As a result, the impact of confinement, both at home and school, on childhood as well as the value of utilising the outdoors and nature as an educational space become clear.We can verify that barriers can be broken down and that outdoor education can overcome difficulties when the teachers set their minds to it. Some of these difficulties are related to a certain reluctance to go outside the classroom, despite scientific evidence indicating that we are safer against COVID-19 in outdoor spaces.This contradiction seems to stem from an excess of zeal and liability, especially on the part of education authorities, which prevented or hindered outdoor education while taking great care to establish strict health prevention measures inside schools. It ends with a message of optimism and realism on the part of educators, who now have the certainty that this pandemic has shown us the great value of outdoor learning. © Federación Española de Asociaciones de Docentes de Educación Física (FEADEF).

First Person: How the pandemic helped one school embrace its green identity

Eastwood Elementary School is a LEED Gold Certified facility and a National Green Ribbons Schools winner in suburban Morgantown, West Virginia. Over the course of the school’s eight-year existence, the faculty has worked to become green not only in name and in terms of its facility, but also in its instructional practice. The school made many efforts to reach this goal, yet the staff worried that fully embracing environmental education would take too much time away from core content. Teacher Jennifer Potts describes how the need for social distancing and increased ventilation during the COVID-19 pandemic led the staff to spend more time outdoors and see opportunities to more fully integrate environmental education and outdoor learning into regular lessons. © 2022 by Phi Delta Kappa International.

Adaptive school grounds design in response to COVID-19: Findings from six primary schools in South East England.

The purpose of this research is to look at how primary schools in England have adapted their outdoor spaces in the context of COVID-19 rules and guidelines to meet the needs of students returning from school closures and national lockdown of Spring/Summer 2020, how that impacted play and learning value of their grounds, and to consider how these findings might inform future school grounds design. Thus, we used a mixed-method approach that included qualitative interviews with representatives from six primary schools (three in rural and three in urban areas), quantitative desk research, and in-person site surveys. We used literature-based scoring criteria to quantify changes in the playground before and after the implementation of COVID-19 measures. The research reveals that the zoning of play areas and other aspects of the school grounds may negatively affected the value of play and learning. We also found a substantial disparity in the amount of outside space per pupil (OSPP) available across schools. Those with the lowest OSPP also had the lowest outdoor and environmental learning provision, lacking the flexibility to accommodate this alongside other requirements of staggered play breaks and PE. The amount of outdoor space that a school has available per pupil averaged at 32 m2 for urban schools and 43 m2 for rural schools. Finally, we have explored how spatial layout and design elements may have supported or inhibited schools' abilities to respond to children's needs, and how this might inform adaptive school grounds design considerations for the future.

The schoolyard: A resource for health and educational innovation

The impact of the Covid19 pandemic has definitively revealed criticalities in those school infrastructures that are characterized by undersized and rigid spaces and / or are equipped with obsolete equipment. The reopening of schools in health emergency conditions has highly impacted on teaching methods, social relationships, student movement, as well as the use of spaces and equipment;however, it has also offered the opportunity to reconsider some forgotten places, such as schoolyards. In fact, these spaces have shown to be fundamental resources for the educational and physiological development of students. The purpose of this work is to compare a critical scenario, regarding the livability conditions in schools, to a more proactive vision, articulated through a set of examples of potential interventions, or perspectives. © 2021, Luciano Editore. All rights reserved.