This study was carried out within a project to promote health and ecosystem services, ?the benefits people obtain from ecosystems?, in preschools in Sweden. The paper applies the concept ?affordance? to capture the functional meaning that children assign to different material aspects of their schoolyards before and after the installation of additional environmental features. The findings from walk-and-talks with 23 preschool children highlight what features children preferred in their yards and why. Few children showed spontaneous attention to the installed features, e.g. insect hotels. This might be more because children were not enough involved within the schoolyard development and experienced little guided exploration of environmental affordances, rather than a lack of interest per se. Given this, we suggest that development projects to upgrade schoolyards for improved ecosystem services should involve children in the design of the ecosystem services promoting features throughout the development work, and thereby, integrally, promote ecological literacy.

This article reports how Swedish teachers' aims and practices were modified by an ecosystem services development project that introduced insect hotels, bird boxes and planting to ten preschool yards. Teachers' understanding of ecosystem services, human-nature relationships and the impact of these on nature connectedness showed that their conceptualisations of human-nature relationships were shifting and complex, reflecting overlapping ideas about what schoolyard ecosystem services might mean to/for young children and how children's connection with nature might best be supported. The findings suggest creating pockets of urban nature in schoolyards is a useful strategy to unpack some of this complexity through direct experience of ecosystems encouraging interest in, concern for and understanding of our mutuality with nature.

As the benefits of outdoor learning have become of increasing interest to the education sector, so the importance of understanding and overcoming challenges associated with this pedagogy has gained greater significance. The Natural Connections Demonstration Project recruited primary, secondary, and special schools across south-west England with a view to stimulating and supporting ‘learning in the natural environment’ across the region. This research paper examines qualitative data obtained from case study visits to 12 of these schools. The results from teaching staff interviews and focus groups show that schools face many and varied challenges to embedding outdoor learning, and a raft of strategies are presented for tackling these challenges and integrating learning in the natural environment into much of the current curriculum. 

This book provides a framework for understanding the components of woodland wellbeing. Based around the collaborative project, Good from Woods, the book spotlights multiple case studies to explore how wellbeing and health are promoted in woodland settings and through woodland inspired activity.  It illustrates forms of wellbeing through real examples of woodland practice and draws out implications for the design of programmes to support health and wellbeing across different client groups. Chapters discuss health and wellbeing from a variety of perspectives such as psychological, physical, social, emotional and biophilic wellbeing.

The book will be of great practical use to commissioners, providers and users of woodland based activity who want to take a deeper look into how trees, woods and forests support human health and happiness, as well as of interest to academics and students engaged in research in outdoor activities, urban forestry and natural health and wellbeing. 

Background: A recent dialogue in the field of play, learn, and teach outdoors (referred to as “PLaTO” hereafter) demonstrated the need for developing harmonized and consensus-based terminology, taxonomy, and ontology for PLaTO. This is important as the field evolves and diversifies in its approaches, contents, and contexts over time and in different countries, cultures, and settings. Within this paper, we report the systematic and iterative processes undertaken to achieve this objective, which has built on the creation of the global PLaTO-Network (PLaTO-Net). Methods: This project comprised of four major methodological phases. First, a systematic scoping review was conducted to identify common terms and definitions used pertaining to PLaTO. Second, based on the results of the scoping review, a draft set of key terms, taxonomy, and ontology were developed, and shared with PLaTO members, who provided feedback via four rounds of consultation. Third, PLaTO terminology, taxonomy, and ontology were then finalized based on the feedback received from 50 international PLaTO member participants who responded to ≥ 3 rounds of the consultation survey and dialogue. Finally, efforts to share and disseminate project outcomes were made through different online platforms. Results: This paper presents the final definitions and taxonomy of 31 PLaTO terms along with the PLaTO-Net ontology model. The model incorporates other relevant concepts in recognition that all the aspects of the model are interrelated and interconnected. The final terminology, taxonomy, and ontology are intended to be applicable to, and relevant for, all people encompassing various identities (e.g., age, gender, culture, ethnicity, ability). Conclusions: This project contributes to advancing PLaTO-based research and facilitating intersectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration, with the long-term goal of fostering and strengthening PLaTO’s synergistic linkages with healthy living, environmental stewardship, climate action, and planetary health agendas. Notably, PLaTO terminology, taxonomy and ontology will continue to evolve, and PLaTO-Net is committed to advancing and periodically updating harmonized knowledge and understanding in the vast and interrelated areas of PLaTO.

The way a young child uses language has an impact on their future life. Early language acquisition is a determinant in adult employment, mental health and relationships with others. At the same time there is a broad evidence base that play and learning in the natural environment is beneficial for young children's physical, emotional, social and cognitive development. However, literature about how these two contributions to children's early development intersect and combine, in particular whether and how early language learning in children aged between 3 and 7 years might be enhanced in nature, is harder to find. For this paper, we undertook a systematic literature review to explore and report on research within this important area. Based on an in-depth study of 181 articles, we found that scant literature exists about how children's language is developed within natural environments. Although this appears to be a topic that is discussed in practice-oriented publications, it was found that very few researchers are focusing on and reporting within this area. Twelve papers were thoroughly analysed and three themes identified and discussed; desire to communicate, communication skills and literacy skills. This paper concludes by suggesting areas for future research.

From publisher's website:

The term ‘outdoor learning’ covers many forms of practice outside the classroom, including Forest School and outdoor play. Outdoor learning has been rapidly growing as a topic of interest for educators and parents over the last ten years and research published in this field is also increasing. Despite the fact that we are inextricably part of the natural world, there is concern that contemporary children have become disconnected from nature and that their opportunities to access natural environments are declining. Given compelling evidence that time spent in natural places has multiple benefits for human health and wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviour (Bourn et al., 2016), there is an impetus to find ways to increase children’s exposure to and attachment to nature through their education.

The chapters in this book were originally peer reviewed articles published in Education 3–13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education. They are amongst the most popular in the journal, reflecting the demand for more evidence of outcomes and high-quality information about how best to implement outdoor learning for children in this age group. The authors report qualitative and quantitative studies and consider implications of the findings for children and their development, and for the integration (or not) of natural environment contexts within school practices. Gathering this body of evidence together in a single volume enables important messages about outdoor learning’s various purposes, processes and outcomes to be more readily accessed by practitioners, policy makers and researchers.

This theoretical handbook draws together the theory and evidence underpinning the practical outputs of the project: the training programme and the practical handbook.

It comprises four main parts:

• The first provides a review of relevant literature on early language development and a rationale for why language development in nature may be beneficial for young children. It summarises existing literature that looks at early language development in nature.
• In Part 2, our integrated formative evaluation process and its results are reported and discussed. In the final part of this section, we bring together some key points from our examination of theory and research to support the value of early language development in nature, summarising the new learning that has been achieved through the ELaDiNa project.
• The third part sets out a generic model that has been developed from what is currently known about this field, (Part 1), what we learnt from the ElaDiNa Project and its evaluation (Part 2) and from previous experience of a pilot project conducted in Marburg, Germany that formed the initial seed from which our ElaDiNa project grew.
• In concluding this theoretical handbook in Part 4, we summarise the successes and challenges of the project, its main learning points and suggest some implications for policy, practice and further research.

In Part 2, we report on the evaluative research which was conducted by the ELaDiNa team to explore the success of the project and refine our understanding of some of the links between early language development aspects and natural environment features.

Forest School in the UK has arguably provided a space of pedagogical ‘difference’ whilst wider structural pressures have reduced the room for novelty and diversity in delivery of state education. This article explores how perceived ‘differences’ between everyday educational contexts can benefit the wellbeing of participants in Forest Education across different ages. It calls into question the application of play-based learning theory to underpin English Forest School as advocated by Leather in this issue. Drawing on Forest School principles, empirical evidence and the theory of cultural density, we examine how Forest School can present important cultural and material contrasts in English young people’s experience and argue for the importance of this function within this context. We critique aspects of the dilution of Forest School principles, arguing that in England, and perhaps other cultures where outdoor experiences have become relatively rare, it is important that Forest School is valued as a site of divergence from more common learning spaces and situations.

This study explores Pathways to engage children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in nature-based activities. It discusses challenges in balancing multiple demands on National Parks to protect biodiversity and meet human recreational needs, suggesting that regional parks that combine wild and managed areas offer a better solution than doing nothing and allowing yet further human encroachment on 'pristine' natural environments. The study concludes how the participants of the study frames and/or defines the progress in relation to nature.