Nine teenage participants and two adult guides were followed throughout a 10 day white water canoe trip to investigate the relationship between their impressions of connection with nature and the canoe trip experience, and their interactions with nature and the canoe trip experience. Themes providing a description of these relationships were identified and three major findings emerged. The first was that multiple themes mediating participants’ connectedness with nature did so both towards connection and disconnection. The second was that participants’ state of comfort was related to an impression of connection with nature while their state of discomfort was related to an impression of disconnection from nature. The third was that the relationship between participants’ connectedness and interactions with nature differed depending on the context (e.g., nature versus civilization). Possible directions for future research include investigating changes in participants’ conception of nature and the relationship between comfort and connection with nature.

This thesis is an exploratory case study that investigates a 'successful' pupil referral unit (PRU) for key stage 3 secondary school pupils located in the semi-rural southwest of England. The achievement of the PRU was externally acknowledged by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) with a recently reported overall grade of 1 or ‘Outstanding’. This exploratory study took a social constructionist approach and was informed by the methodology of illuminative evaluation. This study explored the stories and experiences of pupils and staff using interviews, a focus group and video diaries for the pupils. The analysis of these data was from a socio-cultural theoretical perspective. The research data suggested that success was in a state of flux for all in the PRU. For pupils there were personal transformations in their attitudes, behaviours and values. Pupils’ social and emotional capital was increased by the ‘deep relationships’ that developed between pupils and staff. The innovative approach to the curriculum allowed pupils to engage positively with education and featured lessons that were routinely based upon experiential learning. This included weekly outdoor learning lessons which provided a rich context for informal learning to take place alongside the formal objectives. Leadership and management appeared to be the keystone of the PRU success. There was a clear well founded educational philosophy that was successfully articulated through the operational systems of the PRU. All of these parts contributed to the holistic success of the PRU. Findings from this case study are not generalisable due to its specificity to one particular setting and small number of participants. However, ‘naturalistic generalisations’ may be arrived at by the reader. For example, the reader may be able to apply some aspects of good practice, such as developing deep relationships, to their own context when working with those pupils who are, or have the potential to be, disaffected.

Studiens syfte var att undersöka lärares uppfattningar om utomhuslärandet som lärandeverktyg i undervisningen och elevers uppfattning om lärandet utomhus. Studien genomfördes i två städer med fem lärare och 113 elever i årskurs ett till sex. Metoderna som användes var kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer och kvantitativa enkäter. Resultatet analyserades med hjälp av dialektiken och den hermeneutiska cirkeln. Det mest framträdande i analysresultatet var att lärarna har en positiv uppfattning om utomhuslärandet som lärandeverktyg i undervisningen. Analysresultatet visade också att undervisning utomhus kan vara svårt att bedriva på grund av olika hinder. I analysen av enkätmaterialet framkom att eleverna ser undervisningen utomhus som något som de vill ha mer utav och att de tyckte att det var roligare att bedriva undervisning utomhus. / The study's purpose was to examine teacher’s perceptions of outdoor learning as learning tools in teaching and students conception of learning outdoors. The study was conducted in two cities with five teachers and 113 students in grades one to six. The methods used were qualitative semi-structured interviews and quantitative surveys. The results were analyzed using the dialectic and the hermeneutic circle. The most prominent of the analysis result was that the teachers have a positive perception of the outdoor learning as learning tools in teaching. Analysis results showed that outdoor education can be difficult to conduct because of various obstacles. The analysis of questionnaire data revealed that students see learning outdoors as something that they want more of and that they thought it was fun to teach outdoors. / <p>Godkännandedatum: 2015-06-04</p>

The purpose of the study is to find out what experience of outdoor activities, known as friluftsliv  in Sweden, pupils have and shed light on the perceptions they have about outdoor living. The study is based on focus group interviews with a total of ten guys in the seventh grade in primary school. The interviews were filmed, transcribed and analyzed by the writer. The starting point of this study is that friluftsliv is a culturally created phenomenon and the theoretical perspective is based on Bourdieu's famous concept: Capital, field, habitus and taste. All the students had positive experiences of being in the outdoors. Some used outdoor activities as a method for training. Many of the students experienced outdoor living and the experience of being in the nature as an end in itself. The socio-economic background maybe played some role in their taste and experience of some outdoor activities. Some students felt that outdoor activities can be a way to learn things about nature and that it was important to pass on that knowledge to their children. Students' experiences in outdoor activities at school consisted mostly of orienteering and a lack of other outdoor activities emerged. It´s important as a teacher to start from the pupils' previous experience to create an enjoyable learning. According to the author, there are good opportunities for these students to embrace the teaching of friluftliv based on experiential learning out in the wild. / Syftet med studien var att ta reda på vad elever i grundskolans äldre årskurser har för erfarenheter och hur deras upplevelser inom ämnet friluftsliv ser ut. Med utgångspunkt i frågeställningen så gjordes två fokusgruppintervjuer med totalt tio pojkar i årkurs 7. Intervjuerna filmades, transkriberades och innehållsanalyserades av uppsatsens författare. Utgångspunkten i arbetet är att friluftsliv är en kulturellt skapad företeelse och det teoretiska perspektivet bygger på Bourdieus nyckelbegrepp: Kapital, fält, habitus och smak. Eleverna hade positiva upplevelser och erfarenheter av att var ute i naturen.Några använde sig av friluftsaktiviter som en metod för träning. De flesta eleverna såg även naturupplevelsen som härlig och ett mål i sig.Elevernas kulturella och socioekonomiska bakgrund spelade möjligtvis en viss roll för deras smak och erfarenhet av vissa friluftsaktiviteter.Några elever ansåg att friluftsliv kan vara ett sätt att lära sig saker om naturen och att det var viktigt att föra vidare den kunskapen till sina barn.Elevernas erfarenheter av friluftsliv i skolan bestod mest av orientering och en saknad av andra friluftsaktiviteter framkom. Som lärare är det viktigt att utgå från elevernas tidigare erfarenheter för att kunna skapa ett lustfyllt lärande. Dessa elever hade enligt författaren goda förutsättningar att ta till sig undervisning i friluftliv som grundar sig i ett mer upplevelsebaserat lärande i naturen.

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Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture, Regional and Community Planning / Mary Catherine (Katie) Kingery-Page / Man has been learning in the outdoors since the beginning of humankind. Modern times have reduced the amount of time people spend learning and exploring outside. This causes humans to be disconnected from the natural environment. By making schoolyards more environmentally focused, conducive to outdoor education and play, formal education can return to the original classroom–nature– and inspire people to reconnect with their environment. Much literature supports the ideas of aligning the efforts of play and education, environmental interpretation and education, and outdoor education with formal education; by incorporating all of these elements in a schoolyard, the potential for enriched learning is greatly increased. This project explores nature interpretation strategies used by public botanic gardens and translates these strategies to an ecological schoolyard. At Northview Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas, the students face a simple, sterile play-yard with flooding limiting site use after storm events. The design for Northview Elementary will integrate stormwater features with school needs into a new ecological master plan for campus. Interpreting this landscape using the strategies adapted from botanical gardens for educational approaches, methods, and interpretive displays, provides the school and community a resource to enhance their lives, education, and the environment.

Alternating traditional classroom-based teaching techniques with hands-on learning activities outdoors is beneficial for children of all ages. The purpose of this thesis was to explore whether and how teachers may negotiate the constraints to facilitating hands-on learning opportunities outdoors. A snowball sample was used to identify twelve outdoor educators for semi-structured interviews documenting their characteristics, skills and experiences, perceptions of the constraints to outdoor education and recommendations for building interest in and supporting outdoor education. The findings suggested that participants’ childhood experiences outdoors were influential on their decisions to start teaching outdoor education, and that the participants’ perceptions of the constraints varied dependent on their experiences, objectives and attitudes. The participants’ recommendations were focused on what teachers could do to help themselves and each other to succeed. Altogether, the participants’ experiences suggest that passionate and engaged outdoor educators can have a lasting impact on students’ relationships with the natural world. / October 2016

Friluftsliv blir ett allt större ämne i skolan i Sverige. Det är ett ämne som ska uppta en tredjedel av ämnet Idrott och Hälsa enligt läroplanen. I denna kvantitativa undersökning har det framkommit att de flesta idrottslärare anser att de har tillräckligt med materiella resurser för att undervisa i friluftsliv. Dock gäller inte detta när det kommer till elevernas material hemifrån. Lärarna känner att de har tillräckligt med kunskap för att undervisa i ämnet och de flesta anser att de inom närområdet till sin skola har möjlighet att undervisa i friluftsliv. När det kommer till hur skolan och kollegorna jobbar med eller emot lärarna så svarade en liten majoritet att de ansåg att skolorna jobbar för att de som idrottslärare ska lyckas med vad som står i läroplanen angående friluftsliv. När det kom till om kollegor var med vid planering och genomförandet utav idrottsaktiviteter anser de flesta respondenterna att de får hjälp av sina kollegor när det kommer till planering och genomförande av friluftsaktiviteter. / Outdoor education is becoming an increasingly larger subject in Swedish schools.  It makes up about a third of the curriculum in Physical education. In this quantitative study, the result shows that physical education teachers believe they have enough material resources to teach in outdoor education. However, this not applies to the students and the material they bring from home. The teachers feel that they have enough knowledge about outdoor education to teach in the subject and most considers that they have an area close to the school there they have opportunity to teach outdoor education. When it comes to how the school and colleagues are working with or against the physical education teachers, the teachers responded that a small majority of the schools work together with success regarding the curriculums in outdoor education. When it comes to how involved their colleagues are in planning and implementing outdoor activates the majority answered that they receive help from their colleagues.

Research has widely approached the benefits and potentials of nature contact and outdoor education on children’s emotional development. There is however little evidence on teachers’ approach and educational methods on emotional education in nature. This paper investigates the potentials of outdoor education for children’s development of emotional competences by exploring in which ways emotional education is included within the didactic methodologies in a Swedish “I Ur Och Skur” nature-based preschool. Through an ethnographic approach the author identified three main educational methods by which emotional education is included within the daily teaching in the outdoors: emotional expressiveness, direct sensory experience with nature and affective social interaction. This study contributes in two main ways: first, it shows how educators approach and include emotional learning in nature spaces as a mean to help children engage affectively with their social and natural world. Second, it highlights and illustrates the potentials of outdoor and emotional education in young children.

This study compares the impact of group counseling with that of outdoor group experience upon institutionalized adolescents. Limited to subjects between twelve and sixteen years old, the study evaluates behavior, self-esteem, social and personal adjustment, and sociometric choosing. The object of these evaluations is to test the effectiveness of these two approaches to treating disturbed adolescents who had failed to function in a community setting and who might otherwise have lapsed into delinquency. Significant change following group counseling and following outdoor group experience as measured by accrual of points for behavior suggests that both approaches are effective, with group counseling having the greater impact. Also, younger subjects appear to profit more from both group counseling and outdoor group experience. The absence of significant change reflected by standardized instruments creates two questions. Are available instruments normed on basically normal groups appropriate for use with such a unique group of subjects as those in this study? Also, does the intense resistance these subjects demonstrated toward all pencil-and-paper activities negatively affect the accuracy of results from these standardized instruments?