Teachers' intention for outdoor education : conceptualizing learning in different domains

Sammanfattning: In Sweden there is a growing interest among teachers to locate teaching outdoors. This is linked to beliefs about the potential for outdoor environments to reinforce learning, since the encounter with nature becomes more holistic. Outdoors, all the senses are involved in knowledge-building and activity experiences. According to previous research, outdoor learning can lead to reinforcement between learning domains and provide a bridge to higher order learning. This thesis, comprising two papers, will focus on teachers’ intentions and educational objectives with outdoor learning, and how these educational objectives are implemented in outdoor activities. The alignment between teachers’ predefined objectives and the types of knowledge and cognitive processes reflected in the outdoor activities are also investigated.Semi-structured interviews, including descriptions of successful activities and reflections on metaphors and observations, were used to collect data. The interview transcripts were analysed using Halldén’s theory of intentional analysis to identify teachers’ intentions when locating learning outdoors.  Teachers’ objectives in the cognitive domain were further analysed by Bloom’s revised taxonomy. The teachers have a range of reasons for outdoor learning, including pursuing theoretical knowledge through experience-based learning, exploring real objects using multiple senses, stimulating positive feelings towards nature, and promoting collaboration. The main intention of arranging outdoor learning is to create an alternative learning arena as an important complement to classroom learning, contributing values to students’ learning process. The teachers use a diverse set of outdoor activities.The findings included a typology of four teacher types: one values affective and social objectives and promotes activities to understand factual knowledge, another type stresses activities intended to gain procedural knowledge and emphasizes application of practical tasks. The other two teacher types primarily focus on cognitive objectives, partly to reinforce conceptual knowledge, and partly to deepen understanding or improve strategies to enhance meta-cognitive knowledge. The degree of alignment between intended objectives and performed activity is higher among teachers promoting affective and social goals alongside meta-cognitive and analytical understanding, than teachers who use outdoor activities mainly to reinforce conceptual knowledge. The thesis shows that there is a range of possible learning goals in outdoor education and that teachers are guided by what they value and how they perceive learning.