School ground pedagogies for enriching children’s outdoor learning

Despite teacher interest in wanting to engage students in learning beyond the classroom, many don’t have the skills or confidence to do so. Drawing from an earlier study that examined outdoor, environmental and sustainability pedagogies across three Australian primary (elementary) schools, this paper presents and examines two teaching and learning vignettes from one of the study schools to investigate the impact of outdoor pedagogy and children’s learning in a school ground environment. The place-based study used a set of semi-structured interviews with the school’s gardening/environmental teacher as well as children’s reflective workbook entries to explore how outdoor learning was enabled and scaffolded by the teacher. Findings indicate that school ground pedagogies, particularly when framed by self-directed learning tasks increases student autonomy, efficacy and achievement. The implication of the findings is important for increasing teacher capacity to incorporate locally-based curriculum and pedagogy in school ground settings to enrich children’s outdoor learning. © 2020 ASPE