Research synthesised from across the world shows us that learning in the natural world has a significant positive impact on children’s quality of life in terms of their learning and wellbeing. Connectedness to nature (biophilia) has been shown to successfully improve outcomes for specific groups of learners. However for these benefits to be fully realised , natural schooling , which is about learning with, through and about the natural world needs to become an integral aspect of education policy and practice and firmly embedded within the curriculum for all schools (Waite and Malone 2016). An understanding of the philosophies that serve to empower a world centred pedagogy (Biesta 2017) and to achieve student outcomes for 21st century living (a healthy and happy body and mind; a sociable confident person; a self-directed and creative learner; an effective contributor; an active global citizen) are central to this project. Through collaboration and shared methodologies the project will enable the development and implementation of natural schooling curriculum innovation projects that are bespoke to the partners circumstances, with the specific intention to demonstrate improved learning outcomes for partner identified subgroups of learners (e.g. those with disabilities, SEN, at risk of exclusion, traveller families, low literacy etc.). Partners in the project include schools and groups of schools from the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Participants are primarily teachers, but also include allied professionals from the five institutions ensuring dissemination within the project across 43 schools, 2,100 teaching staff and over 24,000 learners. In addition to a legacy of: improved learner wellbeing and learning outcomes for the subgroups of learners immediately involved, through the positioning of a natural schooling innovation within curricula, this project seeks to: promote the development of new pedagogical practices that foster positive attitudes towards our world; enable a tool for the dissemination of data and understanding about the natural world; improve teacher confidence and satisfaction in delivering learning with through and about nature; create a resource pool of curriculum materials and evidence/data for sharing. In addition and in response to the call from global researchers, the project seeks to further inform academic debate and kindle wider interest in natural schooling amongst a community of stakeholders/researchers across Europe and the rest of the world. In the longer term, the outcomes from the project will offer guidance and recommendations for other school leaders and teachers to follow, develop and adapt.
The purpose of the project is to take forward the work of Malone and Waite (2016) on Natural Schooling (NS). We set out to demonstrate the efficacy of Natural Schooling in delivering a broad and exciting curriculum, while improving outcomes for and the wellbeing of students. We believe there are real benefits for teachers, too, in their professional development. We hoped that by using the Erasmus Plus approach we could trial NS principles in a variety of contexts, environments and jurisdictions across a range of age groups. We wanted to test our hypothesis that the approach could have beneficial outcomes in all these circumstances. We hoped that we could convince other practitioners and decision makers that the benefits of outdoor learning far outweigh the potential barriers that might seem to make it "all too difficult". By developing a suite of Intellectual Outputs we hoped to make it easier for others to pursue NS by providing them with an introductory handbook, information on planning and delivering curriculum innovations, offering helpful resources, providing a platform for interaction, demonstrating the impacts through a thorough evaluation and giving some training resources based upon our experiences during the project.
The idea grew out of longstanding work in the field of outdoor education and WeST/TLI work on both teacher training and curriculum development. The project has taken natural schooling principles – encouraging students and teachers to enquire more about their natural surroundings, to use outdoor resources to cover a broad range of curriculum subjects and to undertake that teaching and learning in that environment. In exploring these issues through the Erasmus Plus way of working, we have shared these experiences as well as the different local and national policy frameworks within which we work. This has allowed us to learn, to exchange ideas and to collaborate on creating the suite of intellectual outputs which we believe will make it easier for other schools and colleges to develop their own approaches to natural schooling. We addressed the needs within our own partnership, to overcome barriers to outdoor learning. We have been able to demonstrate that natural schooling delivers benefits to secondary and primary age students, that it helps teachers to broaden their skillsets, that it engages both teachers and learners in ways which will continue to be developed and applied in those settings way beyond the life of the project.