“Not new, but newly important”: Why outdoor education needs to have its finest hour

Dan Lewis Grange Teacher

A Abstract

Outdoor education has never been more important for improving student wellbeing and academic performance. A key theme at the recent 2022 National Outdoor Education Conference, this article presents an overview of the conference at the same time as addressing how and why schools are incorporating outdoor education into their curriculum offerings. Challenges that have confronted Outdoor Education in recent years, such as climate change and COVID-19, have been taken as opportunities to rethink how learning can take place, what students need in order to thrive and how Outdoor Education as a valuable part of the schooling experience can be made more resilient.

BUSHFIRE Flames tiger-orange and parrot-red. Bushfire burning and dancing. Swirly smoke curling into shivery shapes. Leaves sizzle and sticks crackle. Violent and spooky.

Inspired by the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-2020, that powerful piece of poetry came from a student at The Nature School, Port Macquarie. It’s a pioneering bush-based primary school (extending to Year 7 in 2023) that lives the belief that outdoor education isn’t just important, it is vital, and should be part of everyday learning. It’s also a school that had its bush campus slammed by both those fires and the subsequent floods. The school’s head of primary, Catherine Shaw, was a speaker at the recent 2022 National Outdoor Education Conference (NOEC) and her presentation encapsulated the good, the bad and the ugly of life in the outdoor education sector presented at the conference. A key conference theme was that outdoor education has never been more important for improving student wellbeing and academic performance, but climate change is turning the outdoors into an increasingly challenging work, play and learning environment. At the same time, the sector’s greatest challenges can see it have its finest hour as traumatic events like fires and floods can be

powerful education tools, inspiring breakthrough creativity, such as the poem above. Outdoor education is also seen as a key to overcoming the harm students have suffered in recent years from the likes of climate change trauma, COVID isolation, negative social media, excessive screen time and lack of physical exercise.

Among the 250-odd delegates who attended the three-day Blue Mountains conference was staff from The Grange – Barker’s outdoor education facility at Mount Victoria. Like so many others in the outdoor education sector, Grange staff and their programs have been beset by climate and COVID issues in recent years, making the need for plans A, B, C, D and E the new normal. The conference offered up solutions and inspiration. That inspiration included students from The Nature School writing moving letters of thanks to local Rural Fire Service members. “Kids write best when they have a purposeful reason to write and an authentic audience to write for,” Shaw said. “If you give students a real reason to write and real people to read what they want to say, they will rise to the occasion. Give them real reasons to make English come alive. Great classroom practitioners know how to be responsive to their students’ context and can teach through situations, leading to improved wellbeing while meeting learning outcomes.”

The school also chose to use the flood and fire catastrophes to inspire many other learning opportunities. On the science and technology front, they looked at heat and combustion, air quality, the impacts of fire on native animals, Indigenous weather knowledge, cultural burning, fireproofing homes and epicormic growth. The floods were great for looking at the water cycle, water safety (don’t driving through flood waters!), water quality, flood mapping, mold and the impact of floods on oceans. On the maths front, there was work on probability and statistics such as understanding what a one-in-100-year flood is. The flood water also helped students understand volume, depth, speed and distance. “When things happen, it doesn’t mean we ditch teaching, we radically rethink, we be responsive to the things our kids are living through,” Shaw said. “That learning is more authentic.”

Renowned Finnish education expert Pasi Sahlberg spoke of the crucial role nature play has in learning and connection – daily nature play is one of the reasons Finland leads the world in educational results, he said. As the conference program blurb said of Sahlberg: “His most recent book, Let the Children Play: Why More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive, highlights the importance of play, especially outdoor play, to allow children to explore, discover, fail, succeed, socialise and flourish. He argues play is a fundamental element of the human condition and is key to giving school children the skills they need to succeed – skills like creativity, innovation teamwork, focus, resilience, expressiveness, empathy, concentration and executive function.” Taking lessons about nature play from the Indigenous people who have been playing on this landscape for more than 60,000 years is also crucial, Sahlberg believes.

Kristi Bryant, an outdoor educator at the Colo facility of St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, said the school’s teenage boys in 2022 were increasingly troubled with issues such as “intense” anxiety, distance between each other, a fear of the outdoors born of a lack of exposure to outdoor spaces. There has been an increase in mental health safety plans and school absence. In response, the school has replaced the “challenge” theme of its outdoor education with “play” because, for many students, the challenge of simply getting on the bus to go to the school camp was great enough. Play time “is the most awesome thing for

everything,” Bryant said. “We need to value it.” Her Year 7 students at Colo now get two to four hours of unstructured outdoor play time every day. The play time is treated as important, there are play choices such as Lego, painting, music, exploration, fishing or Frisbee golf, and it is “free” – the students don’t have to earn it. “It’s a need. You shouldn’t have to earn it.” Bryant said that when the students at play are distracted by nature – a leaf or an insect - they are connecting with nature and country, they are learning and losing their fears. The feedback from parents is that their children return from camp with reduced anxiety, with enthusiasm and new connections to their school mates. Other school staff are also noticing that the students are so much better for this nature play and want to incorporate play into their own teaching.

Other conference speakers addressed things like gear repair and maintenance, nutrition, bushcraft, pay and conditions, and how to deliver authentic Indigenous outdoor education. Dr Loren Miller, the executive director of outdoor education provider Outward Bound, struggled to fight back tears as she relived the toll fires, floods and COVID had taken on her organisation in recent years. She has now won $3.7 million of federal funding to establish a national centre for outdoor risk and readiness to help make the outdoor education sector more resilient. Miller said climate change meant the outdoor education sector was sending its workers into “Australia’s most dangerous workplace”, but risks could be mitigated using tools such as better insurance, staff training, procedures, digital technology and weather information. A good example is the bushfire guidelines developed for the St Joseph’s outdoor education centre at Colo, where different fire danger ratings are trigger points for different actions. A high fire danger, for example, means no ridge-top activities in the afternoon. The conference heard outdoor education was also struggling to deal with issues such as insurance and staffing, while other speakers urged the industry to do better when it comes to gender and race. Bear in mind that the outdoor industry is not a cottage industry. In NSW/ACT alone, it is worth $7.6 billion annually, according to Outdoors NSW/ACT. It also supports 77,000 fulltime-equivalent jobs and saves $480 million a year in lifetime healthcare costs. Industry custodian Liz Horne said that in the face of its many challenges, the disparate members of this industry must better work together to build resilience.

Figure 1: That’s how you put up a Barker tent: Year 7 students and Grange staff at the Cathedral Reserve campground, Mount Wilson.

For Scott Manwaring, co-director of The Grange, conference highlights included dives into critical incidents, managing risk, building resilience, the purchase of the Vision Valley outdoor education centre by Pymble Ladies’ College (PLC) and hosting a visit to The Grange for conference delegates. “One of the most informative sessions I attended at the conference was the critical incident scenario information session by Claire Dallat,” Manwaring said. “Claire is an expert in outdoor education risk analysis and management, and she is internationally renowned in this field. Much of the discussion was to prepare organisations and schools in staging their own critical incident day involving many staff, from first responders in the field to reception staff to the school executive. “The focus for the session centred on strategies for dealing with the media in a critical incident. Through an informative online Q&A session with Sarah Farnsworth, an experienced TV journalist, we gained insights into methods and tactics used when covering critical incidents in the outdoors. The importance of a clear and co-ordinated operational response, the need for associated logistics and administrative support from various staff was noted. Additional resources needed during and after an incident in the outdoors and the unpacking of the incident were key learnings. The relationship with the media has a crucial impact on how the public will perceive the incident and therefore the response from the school or organisation is vital.”

Figure 2: Barker students on their Year 9 Grange adventure hiking across the Megalong Valley

Also inspirational was the conference keynote address from award-winning Hollywood stuntwoman and naked reality TV adventurer Ky Furneaux. Furneaux attributed her remarkable achievements and resilience to the outdoors lifestyle of her childhood in remote and regional South Australia. “I particularly enjoyed listening to Ky Furneaux talk about her adventurous life achievements and some enlightening and spectacular You Tube moments,” Manwaring said. “It was impressive how she overcame physical challenges after a serous car accident as a young woman to be later awarded the World Taurus Stunt Award for the best female stunt performer in the world in 2012. She has featured in many TV shows including Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afraid – a reality TV series, only in America! Her incredible tales of survival in many challenging environments shows tremendous inspiration to all. Her resilience and perseverance in the face of adversity is awe-inspiring. Her lessons to young people about thinking positively, being prepared and adaptable and educating yourself in her book Girls Own Survival Guide is pertinent advice for the successful women of the future. These messages are often discussed with students at Grange camps, and I have also passed it on to my own teenage daughters to hopefully gain some more pearls of outdoor wisdom.”

A belief in the importance of outdoor education – particularly when it comes to building resilience and reducing stress – saw PLC purchase Vision Valley in 2020. The decision came in the wake of three student suicides over a short period and increasing evidence of

psychological stress among students generally. “Stuart Clark is the manager of the school’s Vision Valley outdoor education centre,” Manwaring said. “He presented to a packed session of delegates keen to learn why PLC recently purchased an outdoor education centre on the outskirts of Sydney. Stuart discussed the impetus to the decision - tragic recent school events, the state of the co-curricular program and other subsequent reasons behind boosting outdoor education programs and outcomes at the school. A crucial factor was a change of leadership at the school and the subsequent positive vision to increase and improve outdoor education opportunities at PLC in order to increase the resilience and character development of all PLC students. The search for a greenfield site was problematic and the opportunity to purchase an existing facility needing substantial investment came at Vision Valley in 2020. The school invested in the required infrastructure, compliance and staff needed to develop a progressive program of challenging outdoor education camps at Vision Valley from years K-12. The obstacles, challenges and improvements were outlined and more importantly the immediate benefits were discussed as Stuart explained the successful recent Year 9 camp. Based at Vision Valley for a month, students become immersed in a variety of experiences, including several preparatory expeditions before a concluding journey expedition back to PLC from various locations. Statistical analysis of the improved wellbeing outcomes of the program were presented by research assistant Helen Cooper from Western Sydney University, who measured the resilience levels of Year 9 students pre and post camp.” This longitudinal study by PLC and WSU will continue until 2027 to quantify the long-term wellbeing impact Vision Valley and outdoor education have on the school’s girls.

The Grange site visit hosted by Manwaring and his fellow Grange director Liz Charlton saw NOEC delegates from Australia and overseas tour the facility and discuss the features of its Middle School outdoor education program. “It was a successful end to an informative and inspiration conference at Leura in September 2022,” Manwaring said.

The elephant in every room at the conference, however, was that outdoor education is strong in the private school sector and almost non-existent in most public schools. “Starting out as CEO of Outdoors NSW and ACT in 2020, I was astounded to learn how many schools do not value or embed outdoor education in their methods,” said Lori Modde, host of the NOEC. “The outdoor education providers have the antidote for the challenges associated with mental health, resilience and other things life throws you and thanks to the challenges of the last few years the time is now for schools to listen to the research.” Conference coconvenor and Western Sydney University professor Tonia Grey concluded: “Outdoor learning is not new, but newly important. The evidence-based research has clearly shown the physical, psycho-social, educational, and emotional benefits. As an urgent priority, we call on our federal and state governments to embed outdoor education into the government schools, now.”