Opportunities for belonging and becoming: using outdoor learning programmes with adolescent students

This empirical research explores two different sites of outdoor learning with adolescent students. This paper recounts how each programme considers issues of educational equality and inclusion, firstly through design and secondly through delivery. It offers critical hope (Ojala, 2017), for a more just future through examining possibilities for transformation, for belonging and becoming, as well as using these findings to critique the formal education system, to which such alternative education is juxtaposed.

Outdoor educational settings whilst widely used with younger students, of pre-school, early years or primary school age, are less used and also remain under-researched, with older students (Waite, 2020). The focus here is on two settings catering specifically for secondary-school aged students. The setting in Australia provides week-long residential camps for entire classes. These are embedded within the school curriculum design and cater for the range of students across this mainstream student body. The setting in England uses tailored, small-group provision, often with less than five students at once, to cater for secondary-school aged students attending a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU), for students excluded from mainstream schooling. I argue that despite these two sites of alternative education being vastly different, both provide possibilities for addressing educational marginalisation and inequality, offering hope.

Outdoor learning, outdoor education (OE) and Forest School are arguably all contested terms, sometimes blurred and interwoven or with specific meanings in specific cultures and at particular moments (French et al, 2023; Garden and Downes, 2023). Here, the term OE is used in the Australian setting whilst the English setting is referred to as a Forest School. This is to align with terms put forward by the educators at each site. It is not intended to indicate any particular training or formal qualification undertaken by the staff, nor any specific pedagogy enacted. The educator in Australia is in fact a qualified teacher, employed by the school in a learning mentor role, working throughout the year with the same class of students and accompanying them on their outdoor residential camps. The OE programme seen here, is informed by school curriculum objectives and designed in collaboration with staff employed primarily to deliver OE. The educator in England had basic Forest School training, early in their long career working with young people across outdoor settings. This inevitably has some influence on aspects of the provision here, yet their colleagues are largely trained in teaching in early years, so a fusion of evolving, bespoke pedagogies have developed. Thus, neither programme aligns neatly beneath any one framing. In what follows, I will loosely use the overarching term OE when referring broadly to provision across the programmes.

This research with practitioners and relating to vulnerable young people follows BERA ethical guidelines (BERA, 2024) stressing participant informed-consent, confidentiality and the integrity of the data. Thus, given the unusual nature of the OE programmes here, some specifics are deliberately omitted or obfuscated, to ensure anonymity. Here, I analyse semi-structured interviews with key educators from each setting who played a sustained role, over several years, in designing and delivering their programme, applying grounded theory techniques, namely, free-writing, memoing, diagramming and inductive coding, to elicit emergent themes (Strauss, 1987). Taking this initial grounded theory approach led to the use of theories of critical ecopedagogy (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020) and identity constitution (Youdell, 2009) as framings to understand the data. Themes of belonging and becoming emerge and are elucidated through educator reflections on the enactment of both programmes, notwithstanding the distinct context, different design structures, scales and priorities. Whilst students’ marginalisation, ostracism or disengagement differ considerably across settings, the possibilities for community-building, reengagement and becoming anew, resound through both. I argue, this outcome from alternative provision is significant, contributing to debates on quality education and illuminating tensions within neoliberal education provision.

Hence, I contend, they supplement, enrich and counter aspects of the flawed education they are seen as alternative to. Whilst small-scale, qualitative studies inherently eschew generalisation, fuzzy generalisations (Bassey, 1999) may emerge, offering possibilities for further exploration and for hope.

OE in Australia and England is most frequently accessed by younger children and their families, and when it is used by older students, say of secondary-school age, it is mainly as extra-curricular, supplementary additions to formal education (Waite, 2020). This dwindling engagement with learning outside as students age, becomes explicable when considering that the role of OE, as a form of alternative education, is inextricably interwoven with ideas of what such an “alternative” is set against. Embracing diverse learning experiences and creativity, including richer, outdoor aspects of learning in nursery schools is commonplace and as students move up through primary schools, whilst such diversity remains firmly in evidence in many schools, this all too often diminishes with age. Moreover, quantification, competition and ranking are embedded within neoliberal, marketised education systems, like those in England and Australia. These neoliberal education systems are widely acknowledged to valorise high-stakes testing, with an associated top-down, imposed, narrowed curriculum and a thinning of the pedagogical offerings which intensifies with age (Ball, 2016a; Lingard et al., 2017); this in turn, is argued to produce anxiety and disengagement for students, fuelling marginalisation and educational inequalities (Wenham, 2021), as well as generating performativity pressures for teachers (Ball, 2003). Examination preparation, teaching-to-the-test, narrows the teaching focus to foreground and prioritise what is testable. With this shift in priorities, there is an accompanying decentring, downplaying and side-lining of rich and creative pedagogies, as well as of social and emotional aspects of learning, and more holistic teaching, which sees the whole child, as opposed to simply a passive, de-contextualised, learner (Ball, 2016a). In these ways, and more, neoliberal education systems are seen as undermining “quality” education then, including possibilities for a rich environmental education (Hursh et al, 2015).

There is research into pedagogy in outdoor spaces, recognising that being away from both the physical and curricular constraints of the formal classroom, provides possibility for different, innovative practices, new relationships and diverse pedagogies (Harris, 2018; Waite and Goodenough, 2018; Waite, 2020). The role of the very different and fluid educational space is recognised as central to these changing possibilities (Garden and Downes, 2024). However, much of this research to date centres on younger children. I argue that, with tensions with neoliberal education most acute for older students, it is imperative that possibilities of OE with adolescents are explored.

This empirical research, drawing on practitioner accounts of designing and delivering OE for adolescents, contributes to the discourse encompassing notions of “quality” education (UN, 2015; UNESCO, 2017; WEF, 2016) and in particular whether such education can be easily realised within the present neoliberal, competitive and conformist education system, or needs enriching, enhancing and supplementing by learning lessons from quality alternative provision and their clear successes (Fensham-Smith, 2023; Lees and Noddings, 2016). The quality alternative education illustrations here, both offer possibilities for belonging and becoming, for changed futures, transformation and hope.

Issues of climate and social justice loom large across the globe, albeit presenting in diverse forms across places and moments, with some exposed as far more grave, harrowing and urgent than others. In taking seriously tackling these injustices, education matters for transformation (Lotz-Sisitka and Rosenberg, 2022; Mehendale and Mukhopadhyay, 2018). Education, “quality” education, can help to create informed, engaged, active citizens, imbued with a sense of justice. This is one core component likely to be integral to enhancing transformation towards a more just world.

There is some OE research highlighting transformational learning (D’Amato and Krasny, 2011; Meerts-Brandsma et al, 2020), focussing on outdoor adventure education (OAE). This body of research foregrounds transformational learning theories from Mezirow (1978), with roots in adult education. Mezirow contends adult meaning-making occurs through lived-experience, with shared activity and critical discourse integral to this process. Moreover, according to Mezirow (1991), transformation may be triggered through encountering a “disorienting dilemma” (p.168). This aligns well with challenges, adventures or “dilemmas”, central to adult OAE. Interestingly, O’Brien and Allin (2022), in considering transformation in women’s leadership through OE, augment theories from Mezirow (1991) with complementary concepts from Freire (2021), to foreground collective learning and issues of social justice.

Here, with a focus on adolescents, there is a need to move away from theories foregrounding adult learning. Moreover, I argue, to embrace vulnerable and marginalised adolescent students, there is also a need to decentre notions of “dilemma”, or intense challenge and allow for slower, gentler transformation also. This then, together with a desire to foreground social justice, situates the work of Freire (2021) as an apposite lens here.

I argue that undertones of transformative social justice learning, specifically of critical pedagogy (Freire, 2021; Torres, 2007) and critical ecopedagogy (Misiaszek, 2020) are indeed present in these OE programmes, and moreover that it is these elements of critical pedagogy that fuel possibilities for transformation. Critical pedagogy argues that all education is inherently political and advocates for transformation towards a more just future, foregrounding issues of social justice. Critical pedagogy contends that questioning and posing problems in dialogue with others, reflecting on action together and acting on reflection, makes possible seeing the world anew. This re-reading of the world and your place in it, this raised awareness, or increased critical consciousness, in turn makes possible transformation of future actions (Freire, 2021; Torres, 2007). Because these shared experiences, reflections and actions, are within OE programmes here, a critical ecopedagogy lens may be most apposite. Critical ecopedagogy builds on the ideas of critical pedagogy, which often foreground issues of social justice, to also foreground environmental justice. The main tenets align, with concern for the human and more-than-human-other now seen as one (Misiaszek and Torres, 2019; Misiaszek, 2020). Haraway (2020) also emphasised merging thinking around human and more-than-human-other, considering the need to get along together as kin, that is as more than individuals, as communities, as nature and as human and more-than-human-other. These interrelationships, these entanglements, this connectivity, this “making-kin”, she argues is foundational to addressing the range of injustices in our troubled times together.

For OE space outside, in nature, matters. I argue that the idea of place is significant here. Place that is, as much more than simply a space. Place as incorporating context, history and culture for the people who make meaning there (Tuan, 1979). Place is inextricably linked to ideas shifting over time, changing ideas of society, social justice and inclusion then, so place and moments matter. Moreover, experiences and meaning-making in a place, and across time, should be embodied and affective, embracing learning through ecopedagogy (Kahn, 2010; Misiaszek, 2020), so as to blur the distinction between culture and nature, and engage with human–nonhuman interconnectivities and entanglements (Dunkley, 2018; Latour, 2014).

Research into adolescent development, indicates that adolescence is a period ripe for socio-cultural processing and “a time of opportunity for learning new skills and forging adult identity” (Blakemore and Mills, 2014, p. 200). Thus, engaging with secondary-school aged students, that is with adolescents, is imperative for opening up possibilities for a shifting sense of self, for becoming, and a transformed future-adult identity. I argue there are rich opportunities for reconstituting identity across the OE programmes here.

In making use of the contested term identity, I draw on Butler’s work (2002), considering identity categories “as an effect, that is, as produced or generated,” (p. 187). These identity categories are performatively constituted and discursively constructed. I echo Butler in asserting that an identity category is never permanent, though it may appear to be fairly rigid and fixed, if sufficiently reiterated and established, through discourse over time. Thus, for me, identity categorisation is supple, contingent and open to troubling, shifting, reconstitution and change.

Youdell (2009) considered how Butler’s concept of performatively constituted identity applies to education, to classroom settings and to notions of learner-identity. She interrogates the discourses amongst teachers and students, or between students, exploring how they constitute, constrain and control the complex subjects of education. Importantly, Youdell (2006) also considered those at the margins of education, emphasising that not all combinations of intricate, interwoven identity categorisations are equally easily manifested. She elucidates how intertwining performativities in education constitute some subjects as readily recognisable and intelligible as acceptable, or successful learners, whereas others are found wanting, constituted as inadequate, weak at best or barely even recognisable as learners.

Being intelligible only as unwanted in the classroom, constituted as a poor learner, a bad student or a troublemaker, can leave a student feeling trapped in educational marginalisation (Wenham, 2022). Resisting, unsettling and refusing the constraints of identities constituted within the neoliberal education system is acknowledged as a site of struggle, whether an individual is recognisable as an acceptable learner or not (Ball, 2016b):

I use these ideas to think about the subjects in education here, that is the students on the OE programmes. I argue that for these students, possibilities for becoming anew abound, heightened through being removed from their established, familiar place, uprooted and shifted to a new, unfamiliar place and in so doing, unsettling and troubling the usual and what is normalised. These students are differently constrained, being away from the formal classroom, with its associated performativities and discourses, and its established, habituated norms. On the OE programmes, through learning and engaging together differently and in nature, these students are becoming, becoming that is in the sense of being performatively and discursively reconstituted and recognisable anew, whether as learners, as part of their community or as nature.

Possibilities for transformation (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020), for belonging and becoming (Youdell, 2009), will now be elucidated as the educator experiences are explored.

In describing the design intent behind their OE programme, the educator who leads one cohort group each year, enthusiastically articulates the multifaceted nature of their programme design, iterations of which have been adjusted, improved and fine-tuned, as it has been run, reflected upon and evaluated, over many years. This educator themselves has been involved in these programmes for over eight years and experienced many of these changes first hand. She recounts that there are now several core intentions, spanning cohort-building, through personal growth and resilience, to broadening the students’ horizons, raising their awareness and thus even feeding-forward, to alter their potential, possible futures.

Arguably, the most tangible, easily observable aim pertains to cohort-building and an increased sense of belonging: “To build community and engagement and connection across the cohort itself”.

To this end, “they’re in their class groups - and so those class groups are about 30 – with their learning mentors.” The groups of students attend these residential OE camps together with their class peers, once a year, every year they are in the secondary-school, staying anything from five nights for the youngest, 12-year-old students, progressing to just under two weeks as the students age. The schedule, alongside some unplanned, more open, flexible sessions, deliberately embeds many compulsory class activities for belonging: “There’s excursions and trips and activities and team building and challenges.”

Cohort-building activities may be social in nature, focussing on spending time together or on working together for collective achievements. There is recognition then that learning together whilst actively engaged outdoors, benefits from the social, bodily movement and the space (Kraftl, 2014). Many group activities involve challenge, trying something new, or progressing further than before, some stretching of boundaries then and perhaps some associated affect, whether excitement or unease. This aspect of the design echoes arguments that for learning to occur, there needs to be some novel experience, some unsettling and even discomfort (Freire, 2021; Zembylas, 2015). The educator illustrates this with reference to the high ropes: “Kids are scared and so the idea is that they encourage each other just to do a little bit more”. Facing challenges collectively, supporting each other and sharing experiences outdoors, creating memories together is deliberately designed to increase the sense of belonging, “they get to build those relationships […] which is super important.”

The use of the term challenge also hints at a second aim, pertaining to personal growth and resilience, through challenge. Whilst facing group challenges together, supporting peers through affecting experiences, is designed to enhance belonging, aspects of individual, personal challenge are also embedded across the programme. The intent here is: “To build their independence and agency, to challenge them in a safe environment and for them to be put out of their comfort-zone a little bit.” The account makes clear that the collective and the individual are both considered in the design. Thus, there is a breadth of embedded opportunities for increasing self-esteem, through improved social relationships and an associated sense of self-worth, as well as through personal accomplishment and an enhanced sense of self-competence (Mruk, 2013).

In discussing recent iterations of the programme, the educator recounts the increased focus on making sure the whole OE camp experience “kind of flows […] so, the challenges build.” This carefully planned increase in challenge, aligns with the long-recognised need to scaffold learning (Shvarts and Bakker, 2019). Here some of the more personal, individual aspect are to the fore, as she continues:

Her tone is more hesitant as she continues to describe the more nuanced hopes, for lasting future impact and managing “their life moving forward, I guess, a little bit, and then how they’re going to develop the skills that they’ve learned, you know, outside of this experience.” So, this building challenge is intended to enhance the transformative aspects of the design. In articulating “the most simplistic explanation”, the educator summarises “so this idea of entering a new place and then exiting at the end anew”. After being guided through curated experiences of increasing challenge in this new place, “you come out as a changed person at the end”, a change that stays with you as you return to the everyday, “like self-awareness and social awareness […] you have a greater capacity within yourself, to approach challenge. So, you’re a changed person, having overcome stuff.” Alongside ideas of building individual resilience there is mention here of the broader idea of increased awareness.

The educator is equally clear and articulate when it comes to these broader, less tangible objectives being embedded within the design. Here, broadening the students’ horizons, raising their awareness and making possible alternative futures, she argues starts with exposure to the new, be that in terms of place, experience or spending time with different people.

Part of the design is “just about experiencing different places […] understanding different areas, not super local, but within the State, is deemed important. It’s more about just exposing them and opening their eyes to what’s available beyond their doorstep.” This, she emphasises is even more crucial for their school composition, since “that’s a very low socioeconomic school and so to be able to travel was something that they possibly would never be able to do.” Moreover, many students’ horizons did not extend beyond their familiar, “very impoverished” sprawling, suburban neighbourhood, so “it was more just giving them the opportunity to see, that there’s more out there.” Here, the benefits of learning across spaces and places are acknowledged and embraced (Kraftl, 2014).

A further part of the design, in addition to experiencing new places, is also ensuring prolonged exposure to different people. “Like social acceptance. So, seeing how those students present over a longer period of time, I think means that kids are more empathetic.” She details how limited exposure to classmates at school, is often not sufficient to create understanding, leaving some students misunderstood, in particular students with a range of special educational needs, perhaps those students who are neurodivergent, more introverted, or have social anxiety. They had been ostracised and stigmatized (Goffman, 2009; Youdell, 2006) for their “little quirks in the classroom environment”, yet, she argues that through extended time together “they actually see all of that for 24/7 and how they manage their emotions and how they, you know, they need quiet time […] and so they’ll have half-an-hour of the day where they are 100% solitary and they’re away from everybody.” Exposure to a range of peers for extended periods, while doing new things together, interacting, discussing and reflecting are integral aspects of critical pedagogy for transformation (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020). The educator also recounts dealing with conflict between students, often those more marginalised students and their peers: “We’re often mediating conversations between the group, and so I think they build awareness and understanding and empathy for those students”. These aspects of facilitating discussion around diversity of needs, opens up spaces not only for raising critical consciousness but also specifically for discursive reconstitution of identities, in particular for the more marginalised, less known and previously misunderstood students (Butler, 2002; Youdell, 2006).

There are also aspects of the programme design which target developing understanding and appreciation for the natural world: “There’s a little bit of a touch on wildlife and sustainability and lots of different things.” Here, there is resonance with what makes effective climate change education (Monroe et al, 2019; Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, 2020), with recognition that active participation and engagement, in a creative and affecting way that is personally meaningful, all matter. Moreover, the programme embraces the idea that significant life-events in nature as a young person, will improve nature connectedness throughout the life course (D’Amore and Chawla, 2020; Tanner, 1980):

This experience promotes discussion around how “to not deplete their electricity and not overuse their firewood and not, you know, use heaps of water”, allowing for reflection on ideas in practice. Critical pedagogy, and critical ecopedagogy, contend that it is through such dialogue, reflecting on theory and action together, that awareness or critical consciousness, is raised and transformation occurs (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020). In highlighting and discussing the monitoring of fuel and water, amongst other natural resources, as well as exploring and learning about living in nature, the programme deliberately embeds aspects of critical ecopedagogy:

In recollecting particular cohorts of students and their experience of the delivery of the programme, the educator’s accounts are vivid, charged with emotion and illustrations of the new:

In recollecting specifics of the programme delivery, the educator recounts instances which illuminate the enactment of the design. Some illustrate the aspects of the changed place, the darkness outside in nature as opposed to the suburbs, the cold, the different noises, the lack of traffic sound as well as some more specific cultural aspects such as being away from family, their traditions and all that that entails: “Not eating their food that they have at home and just being out of their comfort-zone, I think was also part of the challenge for them”. Some recollections on delivery are intertwined with accounts of transformation, of a changed atmosphere in the classroom, on return from the camp:

There are many reflections on the intense nature of the shared experiences, where aspects of the design are messily attended to in an entangled manner, where cohort-building and an increased sense of belonging, interweave with experiencing the new, with challenge, personal growth and enhanced resilience:

Here there is a hint not merely of improved social awareness but also perhaps greater inclusion with the recognition of help, support and care. This is made more explicit in a different account: “It’s also about learning the skills of living together. And being together as a community and how you support each other and look after each other, and aren’t self-centric and aren’t focused on self […] So, it’s also about building empathy and social skills and social awareness, beyond, you know, their small little intimate group of friends at school, but actually as a whole class of people, that maybe, they don’t have any friends in that space.” She recounts how particular cases of marginalised individuals were brought into the group, through “building understanding, I think, around how everybody is different”. This included a student with social anxiety who had struggled to be part of collective activities in the classroom, and another student with social and emotional behavioural difficulties who had previously been avoided by most of their peers, labelled as odd, and socially marginalised as a result. “When we came back to the classroom, they were a bit more understanding of what that person deals with, depending on what they’re presenting with […]. that comes through.” This is an indication of transformation and that understanding has shifted; these students are being seen anew (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020) and some re-constitution of identity has occurred (Butler, 2002; Youdell, 2006).

Further reflections on the return to the classroom, specifically indicate a greater sense of belonging across the cohort. “When you go back to school and you’re sitting in a classroom, you’re less guarded, you have something that you shared together […] Nonetheless they’ve still had those experiences which then break down their walls a little bit. They know each other a little bit, and so then they’re more likely to connect in class, collaborate, use their social skills for learning.” The classroom as a place has shifted (Tuan, 1979).

The success of the programme is evidenced through various transformations then, whether in a more cohesive, inclusive cohort, or in a stronger sense of belonging: “They all like got along together and you know, they’ve fostered friendships and experiences and memories and built relationships with teachers, and all of the good stuff.” Here traces of having shared experiences to reflect on and discuss together, of the process of raising critical consciousness then, are present once again (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020). In describing the changed classroom, the educator returns repeatedly to this aspect to justify the transformation that has occurred:

There are also reflections on aspects of the delivery which pertain more specifically to nature connectedness, which emphasise the new, shared experiences being not only outdoors but inherently interwoven with nature (D’Amore and Chawla, 2020), and the more-than-human other (Haraway, 2020):

This exposure to new practical activities around farming, all the while discussing, reflecting and thinking anew together, in particular around aspects of climate change education and implications for the environment, embed critical ecopedagogy and encourage transformation (Misiaszek, 2020). The educator herself reflects how it is in her experience that such aspects of critical ecopedagogy stir and stimulate transformation:

The lead educator who runs the initiative where excluded students from a PRU spend regular time in an outdoor learning environment, has been a Forest School leader for nearly fifteen years and working in partnership with the alternative provision for excluded students for six years. She is clear that this collaborative programme is open, flexible and responsive, noting “the approach, it certainly isn’t one size fits all […] it’s a tailored approach from both ends.” The students are scheduled to be outdoors for extended periods, generally a full day a week, over the course of several months, with some attending more frequently and others assigned shorter one-to-one sessions. The Forest School space is on-site, sitting adjacent to the PRU, enabling access and flexibility:

Whether working with different individuals, or changing small groups, “the ethos is the same […] the core is the same, it’s the adaptation of resources and elements of the experiences which changes.” This ethos is clear: “Our overall aim […] the idea is that for them to find themselves.”

When asked to expand on the programme design intent, she foregrounds ideas of students finding themselves and their “fit”, right across scales, starting from their sense of self, through being in the classroom, the education system, the wider community and even in nature. It is this rethinking of connections in the world that she sees as foundational to possibilities for transformation, in the short and longer terms. She maintains that an outdoor environment, away from the classroom, is integral to realizing such change:

Freeing students from the constraints of a conventional classroom, she argues, may be beneficial for all learners but even more so for those who have been deemed to fail in the mainstream education system. She contends: “whether they sit in a hammock for thirty minutes, it’s okay.” This “free space” then encompasses the physical freedom of a more open-space, freedom from prior-labelling, from mandatory activities and from rigid time-constraints of the typical school day. As a starting point for consideration, a list of tasks that need attention is regularly updated on a chalkboard, near the fire-pit and kitchen area and students are free to choose one of these activities, or one of their own: “I very rarely say no. If you come up with the idea that you want to build a tree house, you want to do planting […]”

Embedded in the planning is seeing students in a holistic way, not only as learners but also human beings with wider needs and wants. The design acknowledges that broader needs must be met, before a student can start to rethink their sense of self or their place in the world. “Working with excluded students the holistic basic, core experience and hierarchy of needs stuff is crucial.” She applies Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which specifies and sequences several types of needs which should be met, for someone to be ready to start to fully realise their personal potential (Burleson and Thoron, 2014; Maslow, 1943). Aspects of each of these are, indeed, clearly evident in the account from this lead educator, as she details her programme design. These span from basic physiological needs, here mainly food and sleep, through feelings of safety and an improved sense of belonging, building to increased self-esteem and an improved sense of self. These ideas are so deep-rooted within the design, that they are often addressed in an interwoven manner. For instance, food plays a dual role, both ensuring that the students are nourished and fed, which she asserts cannot be presumed on arrival, as well as fostering shared experience and a sense of belonging:

Whether between Forest School mentor and student, or student and student, increasing a sense of belonging and building relationships matters. “Forest school is all about relationships and establishing a relationship is very important.” Working side-by-side for extended periods, weeding, digging, planting, building fires, just as with cooking together, provides opportunities to build relationships, slowly and steadily, through shared experience and unstructured dialogue. The intention is not only to build relationships but also to start to consider, or reconsider your “fit”, through dialogue; such dialogue, often rooted in the practical activity, and certainly mediated by its taking-place, can ebb and flow, providing a less-intense means of reflecting together, by being centred-around an embodied, practical activity, in nature (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020).

While spending time in a shared space mentors can come to know the students also through careful use of unobtrusive observation, “This is ideal for observing behaviour and picking up on those little nuances that you wouldn’t see if you were in classroom, and it just gives you a different perspective.” One student was undernourished and underfed:

To improve the chances of bringing about change for the students, providing food, the chance to rest and opportunities for developing relationships, also needs to come within a fundamental sense of safety. This intention is also articulated: “it needs to be a safe space for these kids.” To this end, care and attention are paid to student groupings and to setting the tone, so as to not bring outside pressures into this environment. The aim is to create a space that feels separate, distinct, removed from any wider stresses and pressures, which the students may be experiencing, whether from school, home or elsewhere: “Guards are up and they’re hypervigilant when they’re out in the streets and in their communities and it gives them a space where they don’t have to feel like that.” She elaborates further: “A lot of them might be tied up with gang-related issues around that home environment and for us to be able to facilitate something where they can be free and express themselves and sort of find their inner child is really important.”

Fostering reassurance and the sense that this is indeed a safe space, removed from other pressures, allows the students to relax, “one of the key things which keeps presenting itself over the years is replacing those missed play experience […] things such as water play and hand eye co-ordination.” Relaxing enough to engage in such carefree activities, leaves the way open for building relationships through shared positive experiences and success, as well as reflecting in dialogue with others while doing so:

The on-site location means this sense of safety is accompanied by a reassuring sense of stability, of continuity over time, as students can contribute to the site and easily return to see their efforts remain months or years later. She recalls a 14-year-old suggesting they make a tree-house, “one of them came back, to see the tree […] just to see him come back […] there’s something about them having started something and going back to it and see it’s there.”

In terms of how the programme design embraces the natural environment itself, aspects of environmental education, climate change education, or conservation say, the lead educator states: “Conservation is hugely important, but it’s not a conservational project […] My aims are for them to engage with the natural environment because they almost certainly haven’t done in the past and see it negatively.” Re-evaluating their position in relation to the natural environment, for her, is all part of reconsidering their “fit” more widely, just one part then of the whole process of change she is trying to bring about. For her any new experiences and shifts, can open-up wider thinking anew, so she includes discussions of the natural environment alongside other discussions: “It’s a constant drip, drip really, where it’s appropriate I talk about it […] but there is no formal planning of today we are going to …”

A greater appreciation for their Forest School environment, as a space they are contributing to, helping to develop and taking pride in, is certainly part of the formal planned-design:

Here then the intention for a transformative shift, in the students thinking and action, is once again clear. Another forward-looking intention in the design, anticipated to alter their possible futures and explicitly building on spending time in nature, is for these excluded students to gain “very valuable work experience, within the local green environment, natural environment.” Access to employment or apprenticeships, is hugely competitive and excluded students, can be stigmatised and find access harder than most. “My goal is for the excluded students […] they get those experiences and pre-work experiences […] wearing the right clothes and the right attitude. Often, it’s excluded students who don’t have access to apprenticeship scheme because you need pre-apprentice schemes to encourage them to be in the right place at the right time etc.”:

In reflecting on delivery, this lead educator is clearly animated and enthused as she recounts repeated instances of seeing these changes come about. For her, design and delivery are almost inseparable, as the design has a tailored, adapted and personalised delivery embedded within it. Equally, the messy, interweaving of meeting needs, building relationships, moving forward and learning is clear in her accounts. For instance, in recounting the benefits of meeting the basic needs through rest and relaxation, in hammocks, she also sees other learning in action:

In reflections on practical activities, again she makes links to the design-in-action, having achieved creating a sufficiently safe space that is appreciated by the students: “You know they want to come and be in a safe space.” In reflections on delivery, the students do indeed feel free to play: “You know they wanted to build a pond and they just dug for weeks and weeks which again goes back again to basic play experience of digging in mud, but the purpose for them is making a pond, but the reality is really that they just wanted to dig.”

Tangible progress with individuals is recounted repeatedly. One recollection illustrates the incremental change over time as a student grows to feel ever more comfortable, and safe to engage in the space:

Another recollection is of the effective use of observation, dialogue and questioning to discover histories, contexts and concerns to address, to support the students with finding an improved sense of self and their “fit”:

The lead educator asserts that through extended time together, co-existing side-by-side, weeding, cooking and intermittently talking, she was able to slowly unpick, to understand and then to act differently with the student as a result. Here then are aspects of coming to know the students holistically, through listening in dialogue calmly, in reflection and action together. The educator and student, through these new discussions, were able to see the students place in the world, or their fit, differently. Undertones of critical pedagogy permeate this account (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020).

Another account of delivery provides a further illustration of the power of dialogue, entangled with shared outdoor activities and reflections:

The illustration here is again of the early, initial steps of critical pedagogy in action, where a safe, less-hierarchical place is created for genuine dialogue to occur, enabled by physically making and doing and shared contemplation, bringing a changed, fresh understanding (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020). Since identity is performatively and discursively constituted, reconsidering your fit, exploring and articulating a different possible future for yourself, communicating, sharing, even acting out new hopes (Freire, 2021; Ojala, 2017), opens up possibilities for changed future-identities (Butler, 2002).

Within the accounts of delivery, there are also descriptions explicitly foregrounding changing understanding around the natural environment and their place in it. The lead educator recalls discussions with particular new arrivals around large, old oak trees on-site:

Other recollections are more grounded in the practical, digging, planting and physically engaging in nature. One small student group focussed on planting over several sessions: “We planted 384 plants and we went into a lot of work […] they know the amount of work it takes to plant and maintain […] to care for something.” The lead educator recounts these students’ new-found appreciation for the “man-hours” behind the food they eat. Making new connections, specifically generated by outdoor activity recurs:

The lead educator is particularly animated in elaborating on this incident. One boy linked the rare larvae they found with a fund-raising campaign he had seen for endangered species:

Once again, this thinking anew in nature, this changed awareness and altered actions, in particular around aspects of environmental fragility, indicate critical ecopedagogy in action (Misiaszek, 2020) and a shifting sense of the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human other (Haraway, 2020).

That OE is underused (and under researched) for adolescent students, when forging of adult-identity is happening, is a missed opportunity. This empirical research contributes to remedying this. In drawing only from educator reflections, and focusing on two specific, particular sites, there are obvious limitations, nonetheless, I argue, this offers analysis of novel, rich detail, as a provocation.

These two OE programmes, for different groups of adolescent students, in different places, both clearly prioritise change. In Australia, for the whole cohorts of students on this residential programme, it is community-building, a more inclusive and vibrant future classroom, that looms large through the design and delivery. Shared, intense, shifting, novel experiences and mounting challenges are seen as foundational to fuel such change. In England, with the smaller groups of excluded students regularly attending the outdoor provision on-site, it is forming relationships and rethinking finding their fit, that is foregrounded in the design and delivery. The approach embeds meeting fundamental needs, food, rest and a sense of safety, prior to calmer, more low-key, bespoke shared activities. Nonetheless, both programmes embed and exhibit a plethora of opportunities for belonging and becoming, that is for change.

I contend that aspects of critical ecopedagogy (Freire, 2021; Misiaszek, 2020) reverberate through these OE programmes, evidenced through the central role of fresh shared experience, of dialogue, reflecting and acting together, and through this coming to see the world and their place in it anew. This raised awareness and changed future actions, in the classrooms and beyond, I argue comes about through critical ecopedagogy in action then. This, I contend, is also evidenced and underlined through the sense of altered future selves, the performatively and discursively reconstituted identities, in particular learner-identities, increasingly in evidence over the duration of each programme (Butler, 2002; Youdell, 2006).

The lead educator from the English, inner city programme notes:

This is an astute and important observation, going to the heart of any educational provision. Over the past decade, enduring debates around what is meant by “quality” education, whether in terms of access, equality or inclusion have largely solidified around the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, SDG 4, which strives for quality education (UN, 2015; UNESCO, 2017; WEF, 2016).

In terms of “quality” education and SDG 4, even this recognised, much commended and now central goal in education, is contested and open to critique, in particular when it comes to metrics to measure progress towards meeting the goal. Such metrics are argued to be too narrow and to miss the richness of the values of the goal, instead measuring a thinned out, more meagre version of quality and equity in particular (Unterhalter, 2019).

I contend that it is precisely these harder to measure, more fuzzy, somewhat ethereal, values within SDG4 unobserved by overly thin metrics, that are the most powerful and far-reaching aspects of quality education. It is just such rich, holistic, nuanced aspects of education that these OE programmes deliver. The OE programmes here, value and offer opportunities for belonging and becoming, for transformation and change. These programmes, these examples of alternative provision, broaden the students’ horizons, raise their awareness and feed-forward, to alter their adult-identities and their potential, possible futures.

Set against the competition-heavy, neoliberalised mainstream education systems dominant across much of Australia and England, juxtaposed to the accompanying standards agenda, performativity and the valorisation of high-stakes testing, such intangible, longer-term impacts may appear murky at best. Nonetheless I argue they cut through to the heart of quality education. The need for such provision does not reflect well on the thin education offering currently dominant in neoliberal education systems. These OE programmes offer hope that more can, and should, be done. Rich, quality elements of education need re-embedding across the system, for all ages.