Outdoor education

Outdoor education and outdoor didactics is an area of knowledge and a working method with focus on education and learning in both school-related and non-school-related contexts where the significance of the location is highlighted.

The need for first-hand experience, i.e., studying phenomena and processes in their correct environment and context, increase due to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. This leads to ill health and poor concentration, among other things, which is justification for investments in research into our relationship with the physical environment in teaching and learning.

Studies show that outdoor environments characterised by rich variation and nature reduce stress and increase capacity for concentration. Results in maths, languages and natural sciences improve when there is interplay between learning environments.

The research questions in outdoor education revolve around the link between learning environments and learning effects, health-promoting locations, stress and concentration ability, the effect of physical activity on school results, outdoor life as a tool for teaching, connections between learning for sustainable development and outdoor education, the meeting of technology and outdoor teaching.

Research in this field at Linköping University is conducted primarily at NCU, the National Centre for Outdoor Education.

Research

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TekNaD-start

Technology and Science Education Research - TESER

Technology and Science Education Research – TESER – is a research unit in science and technology education research that was initiated in 2011.

A ladybird on rusty barbed wire.

Language, tools and representations

This research area focusses on these tools and representations and what opportunities for learning science they present. We also examine how new types of tools change learning in the natural sciences in and of itself.

Children running through the wood.

Subject-based approaches in natural sciences instruction

Research in this area is focussed partly on further developing subject-based approaches in the natural sciences and partly on investigating and critically examining their contemporary historical and cultural expression.