Research Digest

November 2025

In This Issue

Teachers and outdoor educators

One of my most rewarding professional activities is offering professional development for primary school teachers to increase their comfort, confidence and competence in using nature-based learning approaches. Teachers are typically excited about the potential benefits to their students, though they often initially express a range of concerns and barriers to implementing nature-based learning. One thing they tend not to think about is the potential for benefit to themselves — both personally and professionally. Yet, by the end of our year together, many teachers talk about feeling less stressed, having a greater sense of well-being and feeling more fulfilled as teachers.

This Research Digest offers some promising findings, but highlights the fact that research on teachers and outdoor educators has not kept pace with the burgeoning research on children in the context of nature engagement.

As we close out 2025, if you value the mission of the Children & Nature Network, and specifically, the work we do to curate, summarize and make research freely available in our Research Library and the Research Digest — please join me today in supporting the movement. Our children need nature now more than ever.

Sincerely,

Cathy Jordan, PhD
Consulting Research Director

Research Digest Archive   |   Research Library

Children & Nature Network’s Research Digests usually showcase how nature benefits children. This Digest flips the script with peer-reviewed studies of the adults who facilitate children’s nature engagements: classroom teachers, outdoor educators and other practitioners.

The research we curated for this Digest clusters around several questions about those who teach outdoors: What are educators’ beliefs about outdoor teaching and learning? How do their perceptions and practices change through teaching outdoors? What do educators gain from green schoolyards and outdoor play and learning — do teachers reap the same health benefits as students? What are the strengths and limitations of different professional development approaches for those who teach outdoors? What barriers and beliefs get in the way of teachers taking their classes out to the schoolyard and into nature?

We’ve grouped this research on educators into four, sometimes overlapping, themes: teachers’ beliefs about outdoor education, benefits of outdoor teaching, professional development for outdoor educators and barriers to outdoor teaching and learning.

Teachers’ beliefs about outdoor education

Most of the research we’ve curated on the adults who work with children outdoors focuses on teachers’ perceptions and beliefs about outdoor teaching and learning. These studies span several contexts: green schoolyards, botanical gardens, a pre-service teacher education program and K-12 schools. The practitioners in these studies generally believe that teaching and learning outdoors improves students’ engagement. However, many classroom teachers do not feel competent teaching in green schoolyards and outdoor learning spaces. Outdoor education also challenges conventional beliefs about classroom management and control, risk aversion and care for children — which limits many teachers’ willingness to take their classes outdoors.

At the same time, some research suggests that successful outdoor teaching experiences could shift some of these limiting beliefs and encourage more hands-on learning, risky play and freedom for children. Based on these studies, nature advocates looking to increase educators’ willingness and capacity to teach outdoors might focus on (1) building teachers’ self-efficacy in outdoor-specific teaching and learning processes, (2) emphasizing outdoor education’s importance for students’ well-being and motivation, (3) tapping into teachers’ informal knowledge and lived experiences outdoors and (4) connecting classroom teachers with mentors and communities of practitioners who successfully facilitate outdoor play and learning.

Transforming a school’s outdoor space can shift its practices and culture

This qualitative study documented shifts in teachers’ beliefs and a school’s culture as it replaced a traditional schoolyard with a green schoolyard through a collaborative process. The new woodland play area and outdoor classroom challenged teachers’ beliefs about surveillance and risk and facilitated a shift from a culture of protection to a culture of resilience — one where children enjoyed more freedom and adults embraced risk as essential to a healthy childhood.
Bates, 2020. Rewilding education? Exploring an imagined and experienced outdoor learning space.
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Opportunities for Norwegian teachers to link their outdoor lessons to sustainable development

This Norwegian study of teachers (grades 5-10) found they embraced natural environments in their teaching but rarely linked outdoor lessons to sustainable development goals. Instead, their outdoor teaching practices emphasized knowledge of biological and ecological concepts, conservation, pollution and humans’ impact on nature. With education policies emphasizing sustainable development, the authors call for teacher training programs to align outdoor education with sustainable development goals.
Aksland & Rundren, 2020. 5th-10th grade in-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for sustainable development in outdoor environment. 
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Student teachers’ nature connectedness, competence and willingness to teach outdoors are positively associated

This UK study provided student teachers practical outdoor experiences at a botanical garden to increase their motivation to teach outdoors. Pre- and post-test measures showed these experiences increased participants’ connections to nature and their perceived competence and willingness to teach outdoors. The authors suggest that similar guided, hands-on outdoor activities which explicitly discuss teaching logistics can help pre-service teachers overcome their lack of confidence in teaching outdoors.
Barrable & Larkin, 2020. Nature relatedness in student teachers, perceived competence, and willingness to teach outdoors: an empirical study. 
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Collaboration, mentorship and personal dispositions help teachers enact risky outdoor play and learning at school

This Canadian study examined K-8 teachers who embrace risky play and successfully navigate systemic barriers to outdoor play and learning at school. Teachers who embraced risky play highlighted its importance for students’ well-being and motivation. They also drew upon their informal knowledge and lived experiences outdoors; dispositions of persistence, resilience and self-efficacy; and collegial mentorship from experienced teachers to facilitate outdoor play and learning in or near their schoolyards.
Zeni, Schneller & Brussoni, 2023. “We do it anyway”: Professional identities of teachers who enact risky play as a framework for education outdoors. 
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Benefits of outdoor teaching

Research shows that nature makes kids healthier, happier and smarter. Is the same true for the adults who take children out to nature? The studies in this section collected data on preschool teachers, elementary school teachers and science teachers who took their students outdoors.

Overall, this research established positive links between outdoor education and teachers’ subjective well-being. It also documented many professional benefits of teaching outdoors. From outdoor learning experiences, teachers developed scientific knowledge alongside their students, acquired science-specific pedagogical content knowledge, improved their capacity to nurture students’ engagement at school and learned more hands-on, applied, situated, embodied and place-based approaches to teaching and learning. Some evidence suggests that transformative outdoor teaching experiences may potentially shift classroom teachers’ indoor practice as well as their outdoor practice. 

School-based outdoor education supports teachers’ subjective well-being

This Canadian study tested the hypothesis that school-based outdoor education and teachers’ subjective well-being are positively linked. Those who taught outdoors reported better scores for total subjective well-being, life evaluation, sense of fulfillment and purpose, affect, school connectedness, enjoyment, anger, anxiety, workload, organizational well-being and teacher-student interactions than teachers who only taught indoors. However, the frequency of their outdoor lessons was not significantly related to most subjective well-being measures.
Deschamps, Scrutton & Ayotte-Beaudet, 2022. School-based outdoor education and teacher subjective well-being: An exploratory study.
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Outdoor education may contribute to educators’ mental health, professional development and self-care 

In this Canadian article, experts in mental wellness, applied teaching and outdoor education built a case that outdoor education might (1) improve educators’ mental wellness, (2) build teachers’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors, and (3) serve as a site of self-care. These claims were mostly conceptual and anecdotal, so the authors called for empirical studies that document the spectrum of benefits teachers experience when taking students outside.
Barker, Chisholm & Foran, 2024. Discussing mental health benefits for teachers participating in outdoor education in Canada: a conceptual analysis and future research directions.
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Both elementary students and teachers benefit from outdoor science lessons 

Both students and teachers learned through nature-based science teaching in this U.S. study. Teachers who participated in outdoor education expeditions learned about science, active and situated learning, and strategies for both indoor and outdoor science instruction. These findings suggest that outdoor education can support student and teacher learning, compensate for elementary teachers’ limited science knowledge and generalist teaching backgrounds, and support teachers’ professional development.
Carrier et al., 2023. Teachers as learners: Outdoor elementary science.
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Outdoor learning can broaden and transform curriculum and pedagogy in place-oriented ways

Set in an Australian primary school, this study used teacher vignettes to illustrate how school ground ecologies and place-based pedagogies can shift teachers’ roles and increase student learning and engagement. Taking classes outdoors helped teachers address a common struggle — fostering children’s engagement — as they learned science and math in more embodied, applied and self-directed ways. These vignettes could help teachers envision how to enact locally-based curriculum and pedagogy on school grounds.
Green & Rayner, 2020. School ground pedagogies for enriching children’s outdoor learning.
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Professional development for outdoor practitioners

The four studies in this section represent contrasting ways of understanding and approaching professional development for outdoor practitioners. The first study of a formal professional development program focused on building teachers’ self-efficacy — their confidence in implementing hands-on, garden-based teaching approaches in their respective contexts. The second study shared practical “nature trail” activities that elementary teachers could use to teach science and math outdoors through inquiry-based and play-based learning. The third professional development example emphasized principles of wild pedagogies — especially the notion of nature as co-teacher — to cultivate teachers’ ecocentric values, help them see environmental education as values education and empower them to become change agents. In the fourth study, nature-based preschool teachers participated in an empathy-based community of practice that acknowledged both Western and Indigenous ways of knowing; the goal of this participatory research was to shift how teachers interacted with children and how they connected children with nature. 

Farm to School professional development builds educators’ confidence and professional networks

This U.S. study examined the Grow It Know It professional development program, which helps teachers incorporate hands-on garden- and food-based learning into their teaching. The program improved teachers’ self-efficacy in implementing garden-based activities and trying new approaches, especially with internal (school administrators and colleagues) and external support. However, structural challenges in schools — including a lack of time, funding and peer/administrative support — limited the program’s effectiveness.
Evans et al., 2024. From program to classroom: a photo elicitation study to understand educators’ experiences implementing garden-based learning following professional development. 
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Developing “nature trails” helps early childhood teachers gain confidence in nature-based education 

This practitioner article highlighted five “nature trails” that U.S. early childhood educators created through a 5-week, nature-based education course. Educators identified nearby trails and created science and math activities that children completed as they collected nature objects and walked, hiked and played on the trail with their friends. The authors invite educators and parents to use these nature trail activities to teach science and math outdoors through inquiry-based and play-based learning.
Lee & Bailie, 2020. Nature-based education: using nature trails as a tool to promote inquiry-based science and math learning in young children. 
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Informal experiences with wilding pedagogies helped Greek teachers cultivate ecocentric ways of knowing and being

This Greek study examined an informal teacher training program predicated on wilding pedagogies that recognize nature as co-teacher and the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human world. Occasional weekend meetings with immersive outdoor experiences utilizing the arts, sensory experiences, games, myth, ritual, guided visualization and meditation led to less anthropocentric ways of knowing, emotional connections to nature and more expansive notions of self embedded in a relational web with others and with nature.
Theodosaki, Georgopoulos & Gavrilakis, 2025. Wilding pedagogies: Impact of an in-service teacher training in Greece with nature as co-teacher.
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A community of practice enhanced educators’ capacity to foster young children’s empathy for nature 

This U.S. study documented preschool teachers’ learning as they participated in an empathy-based community of practice influenced by Indigenous and Western knowledges. Ripple Effect Mapping revealed that this participatory approach helped teachers foster children’s empathy towards peers and nature, which rippled outward to their families and community. The combination of a community of practice and a participatory evaluation process also transformed teachers’ knowledge and dispositions, interactions with children and ways of connecting children with nature.
Ernst et al., 2024. Empathy capacity-building through a community of practice approach: Exploring perceived impacts and implications. 
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Barriers to outdoor teaching and learning

In this final section of the Research Digest, we focus on a theme threaded through several of the studies above: the barriers to outdoor teaching and learning. According to the studies below, these barriers are institutional, structural, personal and conceptual. Institutionally, schools and other formal educational settings tend to be risk-averse, protective and control-oriented contexts where practitioners often lack resources, administrative support and the time and participation structures necessary for strong professional collaborations and planning. Structurally, outdoor education remains limited by racism, settler colonialism and the erasure of Indigenous ecological knowledge. In addition, many families don’t have the time or resources to participate fully in schools’ nature and sustainability programs. Personally, many educators’ generalist teaching backgrounds and lack of experience and confidence in outdoor instruction render them unwilling or unable to facilitate outdoor learning and play. Conceptually, many conventional perceptions about teaching and learning — including teachers’ concerns about behavior management, academic rigor, developmental appropriateness, curricular coverage and assessment — get in the way of more engaging, applied and potentially transformative outdoor learning experiences for children.

Elementary teachers prefer adapting existing lessons to the outdoors versus creating new outdoor lessons

This U.S. study outlined possibilities and barriers to elementary teachers taking science instruction outdoors. Teachers believed schoolyard-based science increased students’ engagement, attitudes and behavior but also expressed concerns about academic rigor, managing student behavior outdoors and creating outdoor learning lessons. They appreciated professional workshops which directly addressed these concerns, modeled effective instruction and emphasized adapting lessons to the outdoors versus creating new outdoor learning experiences.
Fiocca, Carrier & McGowan, 2024. Turning science lessons inside out: Professional development for elementary school teachers’ outdoor instruction. 
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Barriers to addressing settler colonialism in outdoor education include lack of understanding, fear and white ignorance

This U.S. study reported on a research partnership between Indigenous scholars and an outdoor education program. Across a series of workshops, many outdoor educators struggled to see links between outdoor school and colonialism. Others expressed fears about correctly implementing Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Findings suggest educators need community and ongoing guidance — not only workshops — to work through their misunderstandings, fear and investments in white ignorance in order to combat settler colonialism and Indigenous erasure in outdoor education.
Brooks et al., 2023. “We should have held this in a circle”: White ignorance and answerability in outdoor education. 
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Sustainability education at nature-based preschools is limited in the United States

This U.S. study examined how nature-based preschool teachers implemented sustainability education. Early childhood educators focused on everyday sustainability practices (e.g. recycling) and assumed that nature play fostered love for the environment. However, several barriers limited sustainability education: concerns about developmental appropriateness, a culture of indoor childhoods and a lack of time to meet curricular content demands, among others.
Ginsburg & Audley, 2020. “You don’t wanna teach little kids about climate change”: Beliefs and barriers to sustainability education in early childhood. 
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