Education outside the classroom for children with neurodevelopmental disorders in special needs education settings—A scoping review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) are at higher risk of chronic health conditions, low physical activity, poor academic skills, and limited school participation. Outdoor education, especially the school-based ‘education outside the classroom’ (EOtC), has shown benefits for non-disabled students, enhancing social, academic, and physical outcomes. However, studies in special needs outdoor education settings are scarce. As an initial step this scoping review aimed to explore characteristics, outcomes, enablers, and barriers of EOtC in children with NDD. Systematic searches in 10 scientific databases, two grey literature databases, and consultation with members of the International Play, Learn, and Teach Outdoors Network were performed. Studies focusing on children with NDD aged 5–21 years that examined the use of EOtC in special needs education settings were included. A total of 50 included studies highlighted EOtC in special needs education as an emerging field based on practice descriptions and qualitative studies. This indicates a lack of rigorous studies, resulting in a low overall level of evidence. Potential positive impacts of EOtC across cognitive, social, and physical domains were reported. Key enablers and barriers relating to students, environment, staff, and structures were identified along with guidance on planning, structuring, and adapting learning activities. Nine EOtC categories within special needs education were identified: Nature-based education, animal-assisted education, horticultural education, service learning, urban place-based learning, outdoor classroom, environmental education, adventure-based education, and indigenous place-based learning. These findings may guide future educational practices and aid practitioners in choosing or adapting EOtC methods based on student needs. To advance the field, future research should focus on conceptual clarity and rigorous evaluation of the effects of EOtC in students with NDD.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.015 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".