Meeting the Grades 4 to 10 Curriculum with Outdoor Learning Experiences: The Health and Academic Benefits of Spending More Time Outdoors

This is an exploratory study that looks at whether practicing teachers of grades 4- 10 in Toronto, Ontario, are providing their students with outdoor learning experiences (OLEs). For the purposes of this paper, OLEs are defined as instances when students and teachers go outside during their class time and work towards completing the requirements for the Ontario Curriculum for grades 4-10. It should be noted that OLEs are not the same as outdoor education; teachers are not expected to be teaching students how to survive in the wilderness. The emphasis I am placing on OLEs is a result of my personal observations as well as the research showing that when students interact and learn from their environment there is an increase in both student learning, as well as student success (Racher, personal communication, September 22, 2014). The impetus for this research topic is that despite the fact that physicians and researchers have been highlighting the positive health impacts of spending time outdoors, children are still spending a large portion of their days indoors. This is in large part due to the structure of school systems in Ontario; how busy teachers are; and the accompanying paper work associated with taking students out of the classroom. This study will therefore look at current practices of five Ontario teachers (three teachers teaching the Ontario Junior/Intermediate curriculum, and two teachers who have become professors in teacher training programs at the University of Toronto) in order to identify the barriers and areas in need of improvement for more OLEs while incorporating curriculum requirements. In order to provide relevant and current data on this topic, I interviewed teachers currently teaching in Ontario schools, as well as scholars who have been researching this topic. Similarly, scholarly journals and Ministry of Education documents were examined OUTDOOR LEARNING EXPERIENCES 3 to gain further insight on this issue. The goals of this research project is to seek answers to the following questions: Given the physical and mental health benefits, as well as the increased student learning and success rates of OLEs, why are teachers not taking their students outdoors more often? What may be preventing teachers from incorporating OLEs in their teaching strategies? Having isolated the barriers, how can we encourage more teachers to incorporate OLEs in their teaching practices? The literature review conducted for this study highlighted the importance of getting children outdoors due to the mental and physical health impacts of outdoor experiences, as well as the increase in student learning and success. However, during my field observations during the last two years, I witnessed the extent to which students remain indoors while attending a typical public school in Toronto, Ontario. Fortunately, not only was I given the opportunity to take them outside and see the change in engagement levels that followed the time they spent outside, I was also placed at an outdoor education center (OEC) where students benefited from Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), a game-centred approach to teaching and learning (Light, 2003). At the OEC, students spent approximately 6 hours of their day outdoors, interacting and learning from the outdoor space. It was evident from the student’s engagement levels and their answers to our questions, that they were grasping the ideas of the lessons, perhaps more so than when they learn in a typical classroom with four walls and a ceiling. This study will therefore use the literature review as well as the experiences the researcher had in the field as the foundation in which to build on the statement: Students would cognitively as well as mentally and physically benefit from more OLEs during school hours.

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