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Within our fast-paced, fluid society, it is arguable that outdoor education needs to be innovative to play a useful role in young people's overall educational enterprise. A critical view, however, would suggest that we must beware of accepting technological innovation for its own sake. Innovations (or improvements) in education can take the form of ideas, methods, and products. This paper discusses how outdoor educators need to recognise how some innovations may add unwanted layers of clutter that reduce direct interaction with geophysical, ecological, and sociocultural elements of the landscape, whilst lessening the quality and quantity of interaction between humans -- whether with classmates or community members. It may be possible to assess the degree to which an innovative piece of equipment or educational practice is 'good' by considering its ability to elicit meaningful engagement between the learner and the ideas, physical objects, and other human beings encountered. [Author abstract]

Learning Outside the Classroom outlines theory and practice that will enable and encourage teachers to systematically and progressively incorporate meaningful outdoor learning opportunities into their daily teaching activities in a wide variety of environments and with diverse populations of pupils. This is the first textbook based around the curriculum for prospective and practising primary and secondary teachers and other outdoor educators. The principles and examples presented are intended to be adapted by teachers to suit the needs of their students in ways that draw upon content offered by the local landscape and its natural and built heritage. Although the focus of this book is ‘the real world’ beyond the classroom, it is also about good teaching — wherever it takes place. While there are chapters on practical issues such as risk-management and supervising groups outdoors, the chapters on curriculum, sustainability, curiosity, responsibility, and educational communities will serve as a valuable guide for anyone interested in applying educational theory to practice. \"Learning Outside the Classroom is a well-written, accessible and carefully structured book that is equally applicable to educators wherever they are working. The arguments and ideals of Beames, Higgins and Nicol build a robust foundation for engagement with the outdoors as central to the purposes and practices of all education.\" — Australian Journal of Outdoor Education \"This excellent book should prompt us all to reflect on whether we need to get out more. It includes new teaching ideas and masses of justification for teachers who already make some use of outside spaces, as well as reassurance and practical guidelines for thoese who have become too classroom-bound.\" — Learning & Teaching Update Preface 1. Introduction and overview 2. Learning across the curriculum 3. Sustainable development education 4. Local landscape 5. Harnessing student curiosity 6. Enabling students to take responsibilities 7. Building community partnerships 8. Leading people outdoors 9. Administration and risk management 10. Putting it all together: Developing an action plan to take learning outdoors Simon Beames is Lecturer in Outdoor Education. He is creator of the Outdoor Journeys program ─ a cross-curricular outdoor learning initiative for school children – and a frequent speaker and workshop-leader for teachers (in training and practising) about how they may 'take learning outdoors'. Pete Higgins is Chair of Outdoor and Environmental Education. He is a member of a number of national and international advisory groups on outdoor and environmental education. For the past 10 years he has been a government advisor on outdoor learning and a member of a UNESCO group working to re-orient teacher education to address sustainable development. Robbie Nicol is Lecturer in Outdoor and Environmental Education. He is a board member of a number of non-governmental organizations, charities and professional institutes, including the European Institute of Outdoor Adventure and Experiential Learning.

This is an unusual article in that it brings together the perspectives of many on this journal's editorial board, around the issue of contending with COVID-19. Twenty statements showcase a range of thoughts and experiences, highlighting the differences and similarities in the way the pandemic is impacting on the educational practice of outdoor and environmental education. The future is not yet written, of course, so it is worth thinking about how the current moment may impact on the months and years to come. The aim of this article is to influence and support such thinking. [Author abstract]

How young people interpret and engage with nature is an important consideration within our current biodiversity and climate crises. What remains less clear are the ways in which online, networked, spaces underpin young people's relationships with nature, and what consequences these spaces may have for in‐person nature interactions. Given the ubiquitousness of networked spaces in society, it has been argued that day‐to‐day life is increasingly ‘postdigital’, in that we may no longer distinguish meaningful differences between our online and offline worlds. Therefore, it is necessary to examine this collapsing physical‐digital binary in the context of young people's in‐person interactions with nature to examine the effectiveness of this theoretical perspective. Utilising ethnographically situated, participant‐as‐observer methods, this qualitative multiple case study generated data across three rural residential outdoor education centres in England, Scotland and Wales, with young people aged 12–17. Participants were visiting the residential centres from urban schools in England and Scotland, with each group spending 5 days at their respective centre. Reflexive thematic analysis of fieldnote data revealed that young people had previously constructed their understandings and interpretations of what nature ‘is’ through networked environments such as Instagram, TikTok and Minecraft. These networked constructions often contextualised young people's direct, in‐person interactions with nature and demonstrated ways in which these online spaces influenced how nature was perceived and understood. The case is presented for interpreting the findings from a postdigital ‘networked baselines’ perspective. The findings will resonate with practitioners and policymakers concerned with the relationships between young people, networked spaces and nature connectedness. Alongside this, given the editorial discussion on the impacts of ‘nature on screen’ from Silk et al. (2021) in People and Nature, this paper provides a set of empirical findings on how young people's organic engagements with nature on‐screen provided a degree of foundational knowledge about what nature is, what nature is for and how nature should be engaged with. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The initial online publication contained several typesetting errors. The original article has been corrected.

Limited research exists that considers the usefulness of outdoor learning as a legitimate pedagogical approach for the delivery of a mainstream secondary school curriculum. To address this shortcoming, we investigated the ways in which mathematics and geography teachers and students from three secondary schools in Scotland responded to the Outdoor Journeys programme, which is a school-based teaching approach that enables pupils to learn about the people and place in which they live. Data collection included participant observation, short questionnaires and interviews with approximately 150 students (11–14 years old) and 10 teachers. In most cases, pupils enjoyed the opportunity to guide their own learning experientially and beyond the familiar classroom context. Teachers acknowledged that such an approach presented an opportunity to develop pupils' critical thinking skills and that these skills can, in some cases, be overlooked in early secondary education. Following these findings, we discuss the pedagogical implications arising from the inclusion of critical thinking as a key outcome of outdoor learning, and as part of the Outdoor Journeys programme, within a secondary school context. We continue by adding our voice to the nascent literature addressing outdoor learning approaches that seek to gain traction within the broader social ecology of established school cultures.

Adventure and outdoor sports - from rock climbing to freestyle kayaking - are a modern social phenomenon that can tell us much about the relationship between sport, culture and contemporary society. In this engaging new introductory text, adventure sports are used to illustrate key concepts in social theory and to demonstrate why an understanding of social theory is essential for any student taking a course in sport, adventure, or outdoor education. Each chapter in the book introduces a key 'classical' or modern social theorist, including Marx, Durkheim, Weber and Elias, or a universal topic or issue in social theory, such as sustainability, commodification or identity. Within each of those chapters the theorist or topic is brought to life through case studies of adventurous activities and lived experiences, helping the reader to connect their own sporting and adventurous interests with the frameworks we use to understand wider culture and society. Concise and full of cutting-edge contemporary examples, Outdoor Adventure and Social Theory is the perfect companion for any module on the sociology of sport, adventure or outdoor recreation.