Exploring the Efficacy of Forest Schools in Education

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  Transcript Jen:  [00:34] Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we’re going to take a look at a topic that is pretty close to my heart and we’re actually going to take a pretty critical look at it while we’re at it. Our topic today is forest schools. We’ve done a couple of episodes in the past on the importance of outdoor play and on Dr Scott Sampson’s book, How to Raise a Wild Child and I think the research on the value of outdoor play two very young children is pretty clear, so I guess we sort of assume, and I’m counting myself here up until this point, that if outdoor play is great for young children, then forest schools must be also great for slightly older children and while I certainly hope that the conclusion of this episode is not that far, schools are the worst thing ever for children. I’m going to be upfront and letting you know that the quality of the scientific research on the benefits of forest schools is really not amazing. Jen: [01:58] So here today to help us dig into the literature is Dr. Mark Leather, who is Senior Lecturer in Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning at Plymouth Marjon University in England. Dr Leather received his bachelor’s degree in science education from the University of Exeter, then a masters in outdoor education from the University of Edinburgh and his doctorate in education from the University of Exeter. I approached him specifically to discuss this topic with us because of a paper he published this year in the Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education called A Critique of Forest School, or Something Lost in Translation, because I think that when you really want to truly understand an idea, it can be helpful to talk with somebody who has critiqued that idea rather than someone who only sees the good in it. And I need to get to the bottom of this because my husband and I planned to send our daughter to a forest school. So Dr. Leather, welcome and are you up for the task? Dr. Leather:  [02:48] Thank you Jen. And yes, I certainly am up for the task. Jen: [02:52] Awesome. So let’s start at the beginning and talk about where forest schools came from and what impact that has on the way it’s practiced, because I think they’re most commonly associated with Scandinavian countries. Although I was interested find that there was actually a far school in Wisconsin in the nineteen twenties and so I’m curious about how the people in Scandinavia view nature and how often they’re in nature and how that differs from how people in the US and the UK view nature. Dr. Leather: [03:18] Okay. Well that’s a great starting point. I think what we have to understand is that we’re talking about something in terms of 21st century forest school that is a branding and an approach to outdoor education or outdoor learning and that our cultures, whilst they are very similar, are specifically different and by that I do mean American culture is similar yet different to British culture and again British culture is White European – northern Europe – traditionally male dominated as is the Scandinavian cultures. Yet at the same time, in 2018, what we do and how we do it is similar yet different because of those social, historical and cultural pasts that we have and so in terms of how we perceive what a forest school experience is or may be, it’s going to be slightly different, which is why my paper critiqued forest school which did highlight the good aspects as well as the aspects that I think required questioning was titled Lost in Translation. Dr. Leather: [04:35] So I titled it lost in translation because as I see it as I explored in the paper forest school and sometimes known as forest kindergarten came from the Danish [Danish word] and Scandinavian “Friluftsliv,” which is a philosophical and cultural approach to being outdoors and being in nature. And what we see in the UK has been the adoption of this philosophical approach to become a product. A commodity. Where in 21st century education knowledge is a product and is traded and sold. And so one of the arguments I make is that this cultural translation that something. The essence perhaps of what is special and positive about forest school, perhaps at some stages of its operationalization of when it’s taught and it’s led. Something is lost. Dr. Leather: [05:37] Yeah, and I just want to sort of make that a little bit more concrete. I think there is sort of this tradition in Scandinavia of people being a part of nature and they, and I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce that word, that means free air life, -it has a whole lot of consonants in it and so whereas in the UK I don’t think there really is that tradition and certainly in the u. s is the tradition of seeing the wilderness as being something that’s scary and now it’s sort of something that’s out there and we’d go visit it, but we don’t stay there. And it seems to me that what you’re saying is that we’re importing this forest school and we’re, credentializing these teachers with a scheme where you go and pay a certain amount of money and you come out with a credential the other end and bandy it around and get a job. But we haven’t necessarily thought about how the ideas translate from one country to another. Dr. Leather: [06:25] Yeah, like many aspects of education and specifically outdoor education, there is that sense for those of us involved that this is good, this feels good, so therefore it must be good. And culturally. I’ll give you an example of how I see things as problematic. If I paint the picture of British schooling, it is very much a setting of Victorian time of developing industrialization and developing the need for compulsory schooling for urban populations in these times. We’re talking about the 18 forties and fifties and there on. It’s very much a Victorian Britain and Victorian Britain is very much class loaded with the landed gentry and a factory owners and then the population who have moved from an agrarian economy working in the fields and now need to be educated. And in order to be educated, schools were set up in the university. I work at – we date back to 1840 where we took poor people off the streets, help them to become educated and help them to become the teachers of the next generations. If we cast our mind back and you may well remember from your time in the UK, Jen, we enjoy a lot of gray weather, rainy weather and a lot of cold weather and so still to this day we have our Victorian values in the primary school setting where wet, it’s raining, recess time known as playtime in the UK, would be known if it’s raining, you have wet to play time where the children do not go outside to play because they might get wet. Jen: [08:15] I remember that well. Dr. Leather: [08:16] And so we still have that now. That makes a lot of sense. If we think about poor families, probably walking to school and home again at lunchtime and then back to school. If you only had one coat and you only had one pair of shoes and it’s raining, well if you’ve walked to school and you’re soaking wet, there may have been a fire probably at the front of the classroom, which you might’ve put your boots around your shoes around as a class and hang your coat up. So of course in Victorian times and looking after you would have said, well, don’t go out and get wet and cold, and there was that belief that if you got wet that you would catch a fever, that you would get some kind of bug. And that was really culturally held, was so still held in my childhood by my mother, bless her. Dr. Leather:  [09:04] Whereas if you then go and look at Scandinavian countries, I’ll give you an anecdote of a time in a teacher I know who spent in Finland. I finished school at recess time just before recess. The other caretaker, the janitor of the school, came out with a fire hose and this was in November and he sprayed the entire playing ground, the hard surface with the fire hose. And because it was in Finland and it was winter, the water froze so that the children could come out and play during their recess, run around skid, scate, put the skates on and generally enjoy the outside. Uh, similarly talking to my dear friends and colleagues in Iceland, if they actually did not go outside when it was dark or if they did not go outside when it was wet or windy or snowy, then they would probably go outside five days a year, some years. Dr. Leather: [10:07] So culturally there’s this “well, of course we’re going to go outside and recreate and have picnics and go for walks” and there’s a great phrase from the forest school movement that one of the sayings is there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.” Now, as an academic, I heard this and I tried to work out where it came from. I first heard it with the standup comedian Billy Connolly, who’s was a very sweary Scotsman that is very observational. A Glaswegian by birth, he tells a wonderfully funny story about his grandmother who would say that to him. Now actually there’s no such thing as bad weather. Just the wrong clothes is a play on words in Norwegian, and I won’t begin to pronounce, but there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.”” It’s a rhyme. It reflects their cultural mindset that hates, of course we’re gonna go out, we’re just put a coat on and I find today that we still have that kind of attitude to outside and inside. Dr. Leather: [11:16] There’s another thing to talk about “Friluftsliv,” It’s actually enshrined within the Norwegian constitution that it is your right to travel over another person’s land and you can actually stay on another person’s land out of sight of their property for two weeks and you may take berries from their land and fish from their rivers now I think in UK we’re actually quite fortunate in the rights of the way the top public, so we have public rights of way that I can walk on a. We have public brideways so that I can ride my horse or my mountain bike on and we have wild areas where there is certainly in England, the Countryside Rights of Way Act. It’s called the Right to Roam. Dr. Leather: [12:15] The laws in Scotland are different. We have different governments, different parliaments and so we actually have a right over somebody else’s land, but that’s to travel, that’s not to stay. And then of course you get to the United States where when I’ve been there and enjoyed my visits, I see the signs posted trespassers, maybe shot for hunting or that kind of thing – saying this is my land. You have no right to it. It’s mine. And I think we need to understand culturally who owns the land, who controls the land, who, how the laws of the nation or the state are such that that directs how we inhabit the land and the landscape. Jen: [12:56] So I’m curious about how you’d see the defining characteristics of a forest school because it seems as though those are probably related to how we view land as well and I think that what if our school is, is a bit different in the US and the UK and in Sweden as well. So I don’t know if it’s possible to gravitate towards some overarching characteristics, but I wonder if you could try and give us a picture of what is a forest school. Dr. Leather: [13:19] Yeah, I certainly can do that. We could use Sara Knight’s definition, one of the leading English authors that’s created an academic prominence in the last 20 years with a number of textbooks. Although when you start to interrogate it, it doesn’t necessarily make sense. I’m going to start by saying that I argue that forest school is a social construction as all of current outdoor education or adventure education, wilderness trips, sail training, social constructs that are using traditional outside pursuits, whether it be horse-riding, ski touring, sailing and using them for educational purposes. And so when we contrive them in that way, they are socially constructed as is a forest school, particularly in the UK. The question I would raise is