With outdoor learning, schools are taking a new approach to environmental issues
What if we held classes outdoors? In the wake of the first lockdown, as part of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, many teachers took up this suggestion. Researchers and education professionals took turns speaking out in the media to highlight the benefits of this teaching method, both in terms of public health and the well-being of children who are often too sedentary. The former Minister of Education had also recognized its “educational value.”
Aurélie Zwang, University of Montpellier
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While the concept of “outdoor, open-air” classrooms has its roots in educational movements of the19th and20th centuries, it now seems to be gaining wider recognition. Reports show kindergarten and elementary school classes that, once a week, go outside to a nearby outdoor space to make observations, engage in physical activities, or conduct experiments—sometimes highly structured, sometimes much more free-form.
This educational approach, which can be implemented in both urban and rural settings, is not currently governed by any specific official regulations. Consequently, it has become common practice to equate it with education for sustainable development. This association is frequently found on academic websites and in educational publications.
However, this association is based on a misunderstanding—or rather, a lack of understanding of the broader institutional framework of education for sustainable development. This field is currently in the spotlight due to the climate crisis and biodiversity challenges. But what do the official documents from the French Ministry of Education say about it? And how does outdoor education fit into other approaches?
Education in Natural Resource Management
The regulatory and conceptual framework for education for sustainable development was established through seven circulars issued between 2004 and 2020, as well as a memorandum issued in 2013, the year in which education for sustainable development was incorporated into the Education Code.
Education for sustainable development in schools stems from several international recommendations: Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 in 1992, the Thessaloniki International Conference in 1997, and the Johannesburg Summit on the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development in 2002. These international documents frame education as a means “in the service of sustainable development.”
Yet with sustainable development, education has become subordinate to an economic growth paradigm formulated at the end of the20th century as a solution to the challenges ofthe 21st century:
“What we need today is a new era of economic growth—growth that is robust and, at the same time, socially and environmentally sustainable.” Brundtland Report (1987).
In France, this perspective has led to a distancing from nature and from educational practices in nature. By explicitly adopting an ethic centered on humans and their economic development, environmental education is now approached through the lens of rationality and environmental management, distancing itself from sensitive and naturalistic approaches, often colloquially referred to as a focus on “little flowers” and “little birds.”
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Starting in 2004, and for more than ten years, the word “nature”—in the sense of the natural world or the environment—was completely absent from official French documents on this form of education. Starting in 2007, school field trips and immersion programs such as “seaside classes,” “ski classes,” and “nature classes” were no longer mentioned. The 2015 circular is an exception, introducing “nature corners” and once again recommending “outings into nature.” In 2020, field trips are mentioned in parentheses, but the text confines nature to an object of analysis or a heritage to be valued by students. It is thus subordinated to human management.
In other words, in the official French guidelines on education for sustainable development, nature is neither considered for its own sake nor as an educational tool. Yet the situation is quite different when it comes to many of the practices and approaches used in outdoor education.
Education in harmony with nature
It should be noted that outdoor classroom practices are characterized by a wide range of objectives. Teachers’ goals can range from strictly covering the curriculum to promoting student well-being and reclaiming children’s place in the city.
When the objectives are strictly subject-specific, the content can therefore be quite removed from socio-ecological issues. Using nature as a basis—sometimes with materials brought to the site (books, magnifying glasses, laminated materials, etc.)—students work on mathematics, science, language arts, visual arts, and physical education. Nature is used for formal learning: blades of grass for counting or sorting, a stick and the ground for drawing, the landscape for sketching, for inventing a poem or a story, logs for creating an obstacle course…
But beyond that, when learning spaces are sufficiently “re-wilded,” nature can literally become part of the educational experience. It contributes to learning in two ways: formally, when its manifestations are presented, explained, and highlighted by the teacher; and informally, simply through the experience of being immersed in it.
Early published findings from the participatory action research project *Growing Up with Nature* show that teachers build knowledge
based on unplanned, real-life outdoor experiences: a bird flying by, a change in the seasons, sounds… They also help demonstrate that nature is a source of learning through the development, via experience, of a sense of identity and a connection to the environment.
This informal aspect, known as eco-education, places students’ education within a framework that is far more focused on human development than on a predefined economic agenda.
Education "from the bottom up"
Outdoor learning is therefore not the same as education for sustainable development as defined in the guidelines issued by the French Ministry of Education. Developed through the mobilization of grassroots stakeholders—including environmental education professionals who, as early as 2008, warned of the decline in outdoor educational practices—it is capable of integrating nature into its methods, objectives, and goals. It is an education built “from the bottom up,” by those on the “ground.”
In contrast, education for sustainable development is a top-down approach guided by international bodies toward the goal of economic growth. Its alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) confirms this trend.
They are now mandatory for any institutional accreditation, for example. Yet in the SDGs, “life below water” and “life on land” rank fourteenth and fifteenth, well behind “decent work and economic growth” (eighth) and “innovation” (ninth), which clearly reflects the hierarchies at play.
In seeking to fit their practices into existing frameworks, stakeholders adapt to them and are constantly devising new approaches. In this case, this allows outdoor learning to be incorporated into the framework of education for sustainable development, but without a clear understanding of its essence. This is especially true given that the educational institution itself contributes to a certain lack of clarity.
In the recent “handbook on education for sustainable development,” there are a few references to nature-based education for younger students alongside the largely predominant behavioral and management-oriented approaches. One might therefore conclude that the handbook acknowledges developments in the field and incorporates them, and that regardless of the specific practices, they can all be classified as “education for sustainable development.”
Yes, but ultimately, what are the goals and what ethical framework governing the relationship between humans and nature that guide teachers’ professional practices? Isn’t this lack of clarity one of the main obstacles to meaningful environmental education?
Aurélie Zwang, Associate Professor of Education and Training Sciences. Environmental Education. Science Education, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.