Outdoor Learning Part 2: An Alternative Learning Approach

This multi-part series of blog posts on Outdoor Learning has been adapted from a Final Academic Paper for one of my Early Childhood Development courses at the University of Winnipeg.

There are an increasing number of alternative early childhood education practices and pedagogies that disrupt dominant norms and narratives about how learning happens. A common theme between many of them is to move beyond the status quo and “resist assumptions of children as helpless and passive and, rather, seek to learn from and with children” (Jagger, p. 159). These approaches make an effort to recognize children as “able to make choices and decisions and have an impact on their world” (Ibid).

FNS pedagogy and practices fit well into this alternative learning space. Heather Andrachuk, an early FS Kindergarten teacher in Canada, speaks to this stating: “A lot of my practice revolves around democracy with the children [with] each of us having an equal voice. I am not the boss of them, and they are not the boss of me, and each of us is the boss of ourselves” (Eachren, p. 227). Similarly, Jagger insists that:

“Education cannot continue as a system that maintains the status quo; it must orient otherwise and invent alternative practices for learning and living with the world” (p. 191)

Speaking from her experience as an Indigenous early childhood educator, Dr. Angelina Weenie tells a story to demonstrate this further. Early in her career, she felt she was failing her students. They were struggling in her class which she later attributed to being because of a disconnect between mainstream curriculum goals and their lived reality. “What I was teaching them was not related to their lived reality. They came from the Far North, where being on the land was part of their lives” (Jagger, p. 3). Dr. Weenie observes that colonialism is a major issue for students and educators, as it is deeply embedded into the education system, leaving little space for non-Western ways of learning. Settler capitalism and colonialism “has and continues to wreak havoc on the land and its inhabitants”, disrupting children’s ability to connect with themselves, the land and their natural environment (Bowra, p. 134).

“It is imperative that all human beings find a way to live in synergy with the land and all of creation to allow healing from colonial practices.” (Ibid)

Indigenous scholars caution educators using nature-based learning practices not to take “existing western education curricula and [move] it to outdoor spaces, while continuing to offer the dominant paradigms without explicit spiritual or emotional connection to the surroundings” (Bowra, p. 134). FNS pedagogy and practices can support educators to go beyond “merely inviting children into nature spaces”, instead, facilitating meaningful experiences and encouraging the conditions for thinking collectively and engaging with shared worlds (Jagger, p. 193). By doing so, FNS can positively contribute to decolonization of outdoor learning and create more just worlds by celebrating and practicing “alternative knowledges, relations, and accountabilities” (Jagger, p. 206). 

Offering a rich learning space for envisioning shared and justice oriented worlds, FNS can model to children what is possible. Similarly to a FNS environment, children’s play takes place within a real world context (like the city), while simultaneously creating a temporary world (like in the woods). Children are learning by “seeing that how the world is at present need not remain so and, in that, that we need not remain as we are” (Jagger, p. 23). By incorporating the values of FNS into their own play, children can “transcend the boundaries of [their] environment to pursue their desires… exert their intentions… and fulfill their beliefs” (Jagger, p. 18). In all these ways FNS has enormous potential to holistically support children’s wellbeing, considering “development throughout all stages of life includ[ing] the physical aspect, the mind, the heart and the spirit” (Knight, 2011, as cited in Jagger, p. 6).

Sources:

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Blenkinsop, S. et al. (2016). A surprising discovery: five pedagogical skills outdoor and experiential educators might offer more mainstream educators in this time of change, Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning, 16(4), 346-358. https://doi.org/10.1080/14729679.2016.1163272. 

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