Outdoor Learning Festival 2009

As Chair of the Outdoor Learning Strategic Advisory Group, Bruce Robertson invites delegates to share their vision for outdoor learning. Particularly important is his view that outdoor learning should be an entitlement for all children in Scotland with all teachers playing a key role in that learning. He shares examples of best practice and policy development in Aberdeenshire, where he is Director of Education.

A number of important messages emerged from the main speeches, in the workshop sessions and in delegate feedback. These included the idea that young people had an entitlement to learn outdoors; that outdoor learning should be inclusive, should take place in the local area as well as in residential settings, and should not be dominated by a risk averse approach to health and safety. The benefits for health and wellbeing and in youth justice programmes are highlighted. Many commented on the need for teacher training and CPD in outdoor learning for all practitioners and the need to form strong partnerships outside the school.

Heather speaks with great affection about the Scottish landscape and the many opportunities it provides for outdoor learning. She shares the influence her father's love of the outdoors had on her and other young people, and tries to answer the vital question 'Why learn outdoors?'

In the second part of her presentation Heather talks about how outdoor learning supports the development of the four capacities of Curriculum for Excellence.

In the final part of her speech, Heather presents feedback from the seminar where delegates' were invited to develop a vision for outdoor learning in Scotland.  Thinking of her own child, she identifies the skills that young people will need to develop for life and work in the rapidly changing twenty first century.

Drawing on personal experience of the benefits of outdoor learning, Eddie Broadley stresses the importance of empowering young learners rather than restricting them with an overanxious approach to risk. Seeing Curriculum for Excellence as a unique opportunity to change the way people learn, he urges teachers to form strong partnerships with other organisations to deliver a broader curriculum.

Heather Reid presents the feedback from delegates in the seminar sessions, seeking to define a vision for outdoor learning in Scotland. A number of delegates share the main topics of discussion from their seminar groups.

Fergus Ewing speaks with great passion about the many opportunities for outdoor learning in Scotland. He identifies many benefits of outdoor learning; health and well being, working with others, and the success of outdoor learning programmes in reducing criminal offending. He describes the lasting impact of childhood experiences of outdoor learning and the "door to another world" that must not be closed.