A new edition of Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators was released in March. The classic treatise on designing meaningful outdoor learning opportunities is written by David Sobel and was originally released in 2008.
Sobel, Professor Emeritus in the Education Department at Antioch University in New Hampshire, has written several books and lectured extensively on ways in which educators can decrease the “nature deficit” students face.
The new edition of this book features updated examples of outdoor design principles in action, provided by various educators. Sobel also addresses the more recent impact of the pandemic on outdoor learning. However, the focus of Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators remains a discussion of ways to build lessons around behaviors children naturally engage in while outdoors.
“[They] emerged out of my observation of kids in diverse settings in lots of different places in the world, and seeing that when kids are outside in natural settings and have access to free play and it’s safe, then they tend to do the same things over and over gain, regardless of economic status or environmental habitat,” Sobel says.
He adds that by harnessing these natural tendencies, educators can enhance learning experiences for students across subject matter.
Outdoor Design Principles In Action
The first design principle that Sobel noticed is what he calls special places.
“Kids make forts or find special places, and it tends to happen in between around ages six or seven and 11 or 12, and it happens around the world,” Sobel says.
Knowing this, teachers can use children’s forts and other special areas to foster learning. “For instance, one third-grade teacher said to me, after reading my book, ‘I would take my kids outdoors one afternoon a week, and each of them found their own special place, and then they would do journal writing or math assignments or something else in their special place. And the kids were more focused, more engaged, and less disruptive,’” Sobel says. “Because she used the ‘special place’ design principle, it led to deeper engagement.”
One common design principle is ‘hunting and gathering,’ which kids around the world inherently do as there’s some biological impulse to do that, Sobel says.
“Another one is ‘animal allies,'” he adds. “Kids have a desire to create close personal relationships with animals. Another one is ‘maps and paths.’ Kids are inherently fascinated with following paths and making maps of places.”
These inherent interests of children can all be harnessed to support their creativity as well as various school topics. Before a writing exercise or STEM activity, Sobel says, you might have students create a map of a small area outside the school, even just of a few square feet.
“The process of creating the map is a focusing device that makes you see things you wouldn’t normally see,” Sobel says.
Outdoor Class Logistics and Technology
“There’s a whole kind of set of things that you need to do in order to make outdoor time productive, learning time and not recess, or pure recreation,” Sobel says.
To do this requires outdoor management policies that are different from recess policies, and taking into account things such as student seating and that the environment is not too cold and not too hot.
Though important, those considerations are not covered in Childhood and Nature, which instead provides design principles for outdoor class activities you can create once those logistics are taken into account, Sobel says. For a look at outdoor class logistics, he recommends A Forest Days Handbook: Program Design for School Days Outside by Eliza Minnucci with Meghan Teachout, for which he wrote the foreword.
Though Sobel supports the movement in many schools to prohibit cellphone use among students, he says outdoor classes can support technology use overall. One way is by helping students become more engaged with any technology they interact with when they get back inside.
“There’s lots of research on how having kids outside in an outdoor learning context increases their capacity to pay attention when they’re back indoors,” he says. But there are also many ways of incorporating technology into the outdoor lesson itself.
Sobel’s wife is a former sixth-grade teacher. For one exercise, she had her students take photos on a school walk. They sorted these photos by plant and tree type. “Then each kid became responsible for becoming the expert on that plant,” he says. “And then they did research on their plant using their classroom computers.”
The final part of the project had them combine their natural exploration with artistic, scientific, and computer literacy skills. “They made a beautiful illustration and description of their one plant in a kind of artistic studio format,” Sobel says.
For more information about outdoor design principles, visit David T. Sobel’s website.