Is It Easier to Learn Outdoors?

Check out this answer from Consensus:

The collective findings from various studies indicate that outdoor learning offers numerous benefits, including enhanced student engagement, socio-emotional development, cognitive and motor skill improvement, and critical thinking. While there are barriers to its implementation, particularly related to teacher confidence, the overall evidence supports the integration of outdoor learning into educational curricula to foster a more holistic and effective learning experience.

The question of whether it is easier to learn outdoors has garnered significant interest in educational research. Various studies have explored the impact of outdoor learning on students’ academic performance, socio-emotional development, and overall well-being. This synthesis aims to present the key insights from multiple research papers on the benefits and efficacy of outdoor learning.

Key Insights

• Enhanced Engagement and Ownership of Learning:
  • Outdoor learning environments increase student engagement and ownership of their learning process, leading to improved academic outcomes and personal development1 2 5.
• Socio-Emotional and Well-Being Benefits:
  • Learning in natural outdoor settings has measurable benefits for students’ socio-emotional development and overall well-being, including improved self-concept and social skills1 2 4 8.
• Cognitive and Motor Skill Development:
  • Outdoor activities contribute to the development of cognitive, linguistic, social-emotional, and motor skills, particularly in preschool children4.
• Critical Thinking and Real-World Application:
  • Outdoor learning fosters critical thinking skills and allows students to apply their knowledge in real-world contexts, enhancing their understanding and retention of academic content5 6.
• Connection to Nature and Personal Growth:
  • Outdoor learning experiences help students form deep connections with nature, which can lead to personal growth, increased confidence, and a sense of choice and enjoyment in learning3 9.
• Barriers and Teacher Confidence:
  • Despite the benefits, barriers such as lack of teacher confidence and insufficient training can hinder the implementation of outdoor learning. Teacher education programs need to address these challenges to maximize the potential of outdoor learning10.

Is it easier to learn outdoors?

Christoph Mall has answered Likely

An expert from Technical University of Munich in Sports Science, Education

Learning outdoors can have several advantages in comparison to learning indoors. In out-of-classroom situations, students get involved in real world situations and therefore often directly with the subject of learning instead of indirectly via paper-based learning materials. That can e.g. be beneficial to enable practical knowledge, everyday transfer and networked learning. Outdoor learning is often students-centered and fosters the experience of autonomy and competence, which in turn can promote intrinsic learning motivation. If the learner has the inherent motivation to learn something, it is often easier to engage with the subject matter. Outdoor learning often involves more physical activity in comparison to indoor learning as students need to be physically active to reach certain places of interest. Physical activity has a great positive impact on cognitive developments and concentration. Therefore, outdoor learning can stimulate and facilitate cognitive learning processes. Especially natural green environments in outdoor learning seem to be beneficial to promote physical activity. Furthermore, natural stimuli (e.g. sounds/views of nature) can foster concentration and relaxation as these stimuli in comparison to artificial stimuli in urban settings do not demand our direct attention. Therefore, the presence of natural outdoor environments can restore our attentional resources, which are essential to successful learning.

Is it easier to learn outdoors?

Emma Blakey has answered Uncertain

An expert from University of Sheffield in Psychology, Cognitive Science

This is a complex question for scientists to unpick as learning will undoubtedly rely most heavily on the learners prior skills and knowledge, how effective the materials, instruction or teaching is and the type of environment (regardless of whether it is outdoors, is it quiet, without distractions)? Often outdoor learning environments or ‘forest schools’ have other differences to regular (typically indoor) learning environments that might lead to differences, such as having increased child-centred learning approaches and more physical activities. What we really need is a tight experiment that directly compares learning indoors versus outdoors controlling for learner ability (perhaps using the same participants) and the learning materials. There is very little evidence currently available that follows this rigorous scientific approach. There is some evidence that learning science in an outdoor environment has a small improvement for a student’s science scores compared to a typical classroom (Wells et al., 2015). There is also some preliminary evidence that spending outdoors is associated with reduced stress for learners (e.g., Mygind et al., 2018) but this evidence is still in its early days and often has small samples or is correlational and cannot tell us about causality. More broadly, there is some evidence that adventure learning which takes place outdoors has a knock on effect on academic learning and non-academic skills too like self confidence and this may work because it improves resilience and perseverance. Though the quality of the instruction and the scaffolding of the learner’s knowledge are likely to have the most influence on learning regardless of whether it is indoor or outdoors.

References. 

– Randomised control trial of garden classrooms on science learning Wells et al., (2015): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09500693.2015.1112048?casa_token=AvSl5_9mY4UAAAAA%3ArO4pt7PPO9JkI3pwTXHKV0B8KzdmruaIJQGsusNxVUZvibjoGTRytQiECKYxPGRsC1_UksC9kUpxS08& 

– Evidence on Adventure learning: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/outdoor-adventure-learning/#search

Is it easier to learn outdoors?

Yousef Khalifa Aleghfeli has answered Uncertain

An expert from Oxford University in Education

It depends on the needs and circumstances of each individual. Learning environments must center around the needs and circumstances of each individual to ensure that they are learning at an optimal level. That’s why educational researchers emphasize the importance of student-centric classroom settings. Sometimes, those settings can be outdoors and other times they can be indoors.