Teaching Outdoors in Higher Education
Abstract
In many respects, outdoor life is seen as healthy for body and mind, and especially within the teaching of children, education outdoors as a method is gaining ground. Within higher education, outdoor education still plays a marginal role. Outdoor educators must balance teaching skills with the choice of relevant teaching areas very different from the norm of indoor university teaching.
This thesis aims at understanding how four experiential educators create relevant teaching activities in the outdoors, what drives these teachers, and what they look for in nature when looking for a place to teach.
Through four interviews with university teachers and literature on teaching experientially, place-responsiveness and outdoor education, the thesis explores what was said and how literature and experiences from real life matched.
It was found that in education outdoors, the place of teaching plays a significant role in creating authentic teaching, and to some extent, it might promote sustainable behaviour from students. To facilitate the best possible learning outcome, the interviewed educators focused much attention on reflection-in- and -on-action, both when supporting student knowledge transfer and when working towards creating a better practice themselves.