OUTDOOR EDUCATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN'S COGNITIVE AND RELATIONAL SKILLS

Abstract

The word 'Outdoor Education' (OE) encompasses a wide variety of pedagogical experiences characterised by active teaching that takes place in environments outside the school and is tailored to the characteristics of the territory and the socio-cultural context in which the school is located.

Originating in northern European countries and widespread there, in recent years outdoor education is also seeing a rapid spread in the Italian context.

The experience of outdoor schooling presents different challenges from those of traditional education, and children necessarily enhance creativity, collaboration and problem solving to deal with them (Brügge et al., 2018). OE is proposed as an alternative not only to traditional schooling, but also to the prevailing lifestyle of today's generation: children spend most of their time inside structures, be it the home, the school building, the gymnasium, and their days are punctuated by adult-scheduled engagements, so they lack free time to experiment or to get bored and therefore voluntarily seek, invent and create alternative activities (Gardner and Davis, 2014).

In addition to sharing and recognising the principles described in the Agenda 2030, its dissemination represents an opportunity to play a leading role in a renewed way of teaching by exploiting outdoor spaces as ideal learning environments, through a didactic approach based on exploration, discovery and learning skills in the field for unique competence development.