Understanding educational and wellbeing implications of learning outside the classroom through cross-national collaboration

There is intense and gathering interest in the contribution that learning outside the classroom can make to children's wellbeing, creativity and their motivation for lifelong learning, linked to a concern that a narrow focus on cognitive outcomes may be failing to develop flexible, creative and resilient young people who are willing and able to contribute to society and to cope in a rapidly changing world. A desire to (re)connect children and nature to nurture respect and care for a threatened global environment has also struck a chord in our partner countries. For example, the English Learning Outside the Classroom initiative is supported across party political lines. In Singapore, nature corridors are being created to make it a city in a garden and a new Programme for Active Learning is being implemented to address concerns about how far creativity and entrepreneurial spirit can be fostered by prevalent didactic teaching. 'Friluftsliv', the open air life, has long been valued in Scandinavia; grassroots movements in Denmark are augmenting children's curriculum experience through outdoor learning. However, the complexity of the interactions between mainstream educational goals and national cultural traditions relating to the outdoors is difficult to understand and theorise without close attention to how national policies, processes and people construct different opportunities for learning outside the classroom. Australian academics, such as Stewart and Brookes, have cautioned that generalisation of principles from research studies without due regard for cultural situations is misleading, while US studies of community-based education reposition conceptualisations of the 'outdoors.' Although the research field is strengthening and diversifying, there is a lack of coherence and congruence in how this research builds upon existing knowledge and accounts for cultural factors. The reasons for this include a lack of comparative methodologies, limited opportunities for debate and an absence of cross-national collaboration to learn from different cultural and education systems.

It is time to explore how our various cultural traditions, particularly regarding the outdoors and nature, and our policy contexts are meeting these educational challenges, which are simultaneously highly situated and of global significance. Through the international networking that we are proposing, we would be supported in addressing issues such as: what we currently know about the way in which learning outside the classroom influences children's education and wellbeing; how we can build upon existing international evidence regarding learning outside the classroom and move the research agenda forward; how place, cultural factors and learning outside the classroom interact; the impact on social cohesion that community-based learning outside the classroom might afford; how outdoor contexts for learning interact with pedagogy, curriculum and didaktik. Our collaboration will help to address the associated research and methodological issues.

The countries and scholars have been deliberately selected as network partners to represent a coherent spread of cultural attitudes to the outdoors and range of educational policy frameworks. The core partnership comprises published authors who have ESRC and other externally-funded research project experience and includes practitioners and policy-makers to help realise practical implications of the research. Previous workshops, co-editing international special issues, and a British Educational Research Association 'Meeting of Minds' award have developed working relationships among the core partners; this funding would leverage our existing network to a strong, focused partnership that will produce collaborative papers, establish exchange opportunities for early career researchers, formulate cross-national research programmes and thus have significant impact on policy and practice in our respective countries and beyond.

School-aged pupils will benefit from the activities of this international network which will help to clarify theory and rationales for learning outside the classroom. This form of learning is widely accepted for early years children but pupils in England currently experience marked decline in the opportunities for learning outdoors after the Foundation Stage (Waite, 2010). Other countries report a similar reduction, which is often attributed to the increasing pressure for achievement of performance standards. Research, however, suggests that young people enjoy learning outside the classroom, and that it can have cognitive, social, emotional and behavioural benefits for participants of all ages (Dillon et al. 2005; Rickinson et al., 2004). Learning outside the classroom also appears to engage young people with their learning because they see a purpose for learning beyond academic attainment performance (Passy et al., 2010; Waite & Passy, 2011; Waite, 2011).Through our programme of international, collaborative research that will engage with evidence, pedagogy and theory of learning outside the classroom, we aim to influence teachers' and other practitioners' decisions about learning outside the classroom to the benefit of their pupils.

Teachers in the various countries represented in the partnership and wider network experience different degrees of external pressure through high stakes testing and different curricular and pedagogic traditions. Developing greater clarity about the relationship between these and outcomes associated with learning outside the classroom will help teachers to make decisions about appropriate proportions and forms of outdoor learning.

Learning outside the classroom practitioners are increasingly being employed in some nations to provide outdoor activities to supplement the schooling offered by mainstream practitioners. Market-based outdoor learning introduces further complication to its provision as benefits may compete with profit and the degree of match between activities and their potential benefits needs critical examination. The work of the network will assist learning outside the classroom practitioners, teachers and policy makers to understand how best commercial outdoor learning provision can articulate with mainstream educational practice.

Teacher trainers have the responsibility to equip student teachers with the capacity to provide broad and balanced curricula for their future pupils. The debate and critical commentary arising from our network partnership will help to inform HEIs involved in teacher training to prepare their students to critically appraise learning outside the classroom and better match purposes with provision.

Policy-makers' use of international comparative data has sometimes been criticised for its failure to take sufficient account of the cultural factors that situate it (Alexander et al., 1999). However, some comparative work has focused at a micro level on what happens within classrooms within wider contextual understanding (Tobin, 1999). This international partnership will support us in avoiding generalisations without due attention to cultural, curricular and pedagogic distinctions and hence provide more grounded and theorised recommendations for policy and practice.

The role of local communities in learning outside the classroom is currently under-researched and under-theorised (Seaman & Rheingold, 2010). The work undertaken by the partnership will facilitate greater understanding of how communities can be involved in these activities and the impact this involvement may have on social cohesion.

Invitations will be extended to teachers, student teachers, teacher trainers, learning outside the classroom practitioners and policy makers to network events and policy briefings. Summaries of papers and activities will be posted on the website in addition to developing a coherent body of academic and practitioner publications.