Conference Agenda

Across Europe, accelerating biodiversity loss and degraded ecosystems demand education responses that connect pupils with people, place and space. These connections have the potential for developing disciplinary knowledge and cultivate action for systemic change. UK monitoring synthesises a long-term decline, on average 19% across studied species since 1970, with nearly one in six threatened with extinction, illustrating the urgency but also the shared European challenge to rebuild ecological literacy and action competences in schools (Burns et al., 2023). Within this landscape, this paper reports on a year-long primary project from England that integrated biodiversity education and mathematics through outdoor learning whilst utilising the National Education Nature Park (NENP) infrastructure led by the Department for Education and the Natural History Museum in London(DfE, 2022), England. The NENP provides free, curriculum-linked resources and a national mapping platform for pupil-generated data. Esri UK (2024) reports that over 3,000 schools are participating in the National Education Nature Park.

Project Outline

The project was co-designed, using participatory research approaches (Sevón, Mustola, Siippainen, & Vlasov, 2025; Spiteri, 2020; Veale, 2005), with teachers and pupils to transform school grounds into biodiversity supporting spaces, while embedding core mathematics skills (e.g: measurement, mapping, statistics, proportional reasoning, and budgeting). Pupils conducted baseline habitat audits using quadrats, carried out soil health investigations through worm counts as bioindicators, mapped existing site features with geospatial tools aligned to NENP guidance, and developed costed alternative designs (e.g., wildflower meadows, bug hotels, pollinator planting, bird feeders etc). The NENP framework enabled pupils to upload habitat maps that contribute to national datasets and research, including integration with NHM’s Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity in Changing Terrestrial Systems-PREDICTS database and Biodiversity Intactness Index modelling, offering an authentic curriculum context and a mechanism to track change over time across the education estate.

Pedagogical foundations.
Pedagogically, the project draws on evidence that high-quality outdoor learning supports academic outcomes, socio-emotional development and wellbeing when tasks are intentionally designed, resourced, and assessed (Jucker, Au, & von Au, 2022; Mann et al., 2022). International systematic reviews similarly report benefits of nature‑specific outdoor learning for personal/social development and, in well‑designed interventions, academic progress (Mann et al., 2022). At the same time, mathematics engagement outdoors shows mixed patterns, necessitating explicit attention to task quality, scaffolding and assessment (Laird, Grootenboer, & Larkin, 2021)

This project presents a replicable model for integrating mathematics and biodiversity education to build pupils’ ecological literacy, through mathematical thinking in primary schools. It applies the Transformative Education framework in authentic, place‑based contexts, linking curriculum learning with civic participation. For European systems, it shows the potential such approaches have to lower barriers, support teacher practice, and generate research‑grade datasets that connect school grounds to broader recovery efforts. By situating local work within documented biodiversity decline, the project highlights the need to align curriculum, pedagogy and policy toward measurable nature recovery while supporting academic progress and wellbeing.

Theoretical Framework

The project design and analysis are grounded in (Glackin & Greer, 2025) Transformative Education model, which articulates six interrelated qualities:

1. Openness to alternative visions of the future and approaches to education operationalised through pupil-led rewilding plans and future-state scenarios.
2. Embracing complexity modelling trade-offs (e.g., biodiversity gains vs. play/access needs).
3. Incorporating multiple knowledge types combining local ecological observations, community input, and disciplinary mathematics.
4. Re-orienting towards justice ensuring equitable access to nature within constrained urban schools.
5. Developing ecological worldviews fostered by repeated, place-based encounters.
6. Supporting students to bring about systemic change connecting school-level actions to NENP’s national mapping and evidence infrastructure, including developing resources for the NENP.

This study investigates the impact of outdoor learning activities on preschool children’s self-regulation skills and social-emotional well-being within early childhood education. Early childhood (ages 0–6) represents a critical period during which cognitive, behavioral, and socio-emotional competencies develop rapidly. Self-regulation skills-including attention control, inhibitory control, and rule-following-and social-emotional well-being indicators, such as emotional adjustment and psychological resilience, are closely linked to children’s learning engagement and classroom adaptation (Blair & Raver, 2015; Denham et al., 2012). Contemporary educational research highlights that confining learning environments to indoor classroom settings may limit children’s opportunities for experiential, movement-based, and multisensory learning (Caine & Caine, 1991). Consequently, school gardens and outdoor learning environments have attracted growing attention as pedagogical spaces that allow children to explore, interact with nature, participate in physical activity, and cultivate environmental awareness. Studies conducted in Türkiye have shown that outdoor activities are linked to improvements in social skills, reductions in problem behaviors (Kaya & Özyürek, 2021), and enhanced scientific process skills among preschool children (Civelek & Özyılmaz Akamca, 2017). Furthermore, teacher-based qualitative research suggests that outdoor learning environments foster children’s motor development, communication skills, observational abilities, and value acquisition (Dere & Çiftçi, 2022). Despite these promising findings, much of the existing research has concentrated on isolated developmental outcomes and has predominantly relied on teacher perceptions. There is a clear need for mixed-methods and experimental research designs that concurrently examine self-regulation and social-emotional well-being as interrelated developmental constructs. This need is underscored by recent curriculum reforms in Türkiye, such as the “Türkiye Yüzyılı Maarif Modeli,” which explicitly identifies experiential and outdoor learning as fundamental elements of early childhood education (Ministry of National Education, 2024). The main research question guiding this study is:
Do structured outdoor learning activities significantly influence preschool children’s self-regulation skills and social-emotional well-being? The study addresses the following sub-questions:

1. Are there significant differences in children’s self-regulation skills before and after participation in outdoor learning activities?
2. Do outdoor learning activities contribute to changes in children’s social-emotional well-being and psychological resilience?
3. How do teachers perceive changes in children’s behavioral regulation and emotional adjustment during the implementation process?
4. How do teachers’ perceptions of outdoor learning practices change before and after the intervention?

The study is theoretically grounded in experiential learning theory, environmental education perspectives, and self-regulation development frameworks, all of which emphasize active engagement, interaction with natural environments, and emotionally supportive learning contexts. From a sustainability education perspective, outdoor learning environments are conceptualized not only as physical spaces but also as pedagogical contexts that promote environmental awareness, well-being, and enduring positive attitudes toward sustainable living. By integrating quantitative outcome measures with qualitative teacher perspectives, this study seeks to contribute to international discourse on how early childhood outdoor education can support both child development and sustainability-oriented educational practices.

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A recent review of European professional teacher education focussed on Learning for Sustainability (LfS) highlighted Scotland as a place where educationalists are not only expected to teach about sustainability, but that they should also enact it in all areas of their work in schools (Mulà, & Tilbury, 2025). The same review indicated that pedagogically transformative and emancipatory approaches to LfS should be part of the catalyst for change across professional teacher education in Europe. This paper is therefore presented by two Scottish educators, fortunate enough to work within a system where LfS is at the heart of education (Clarke & Mcphie 2016). Additionally, they find themselves working within curriculum frameworks which extol the benefit of learning outdoors (Learning & Teaching Scotland, 2010; Christie et al., 2014).

Building on the 2019 policy, the most recent Action Plan (2023) of the Scottish Government sets out how schools and other learning settings can participate in a ‘strategic national approach,’ (ibid, p5) to LfS. This sharing of responsibility is felt keenly by the authors of this paper exploring research deeply connected to practice. It is also an enactment of the transformative and emancipatory action espoused by Sterling (2012).

One part of LfS in Scotland is outdoor learning, and in this paper, the two authors explore the role of drawing within the development of children’s understanding and knowledge of local woodland and beach ecologies during outdoor learning sessions. It draws on findings from two separate research projects carried out by the authors.

The woodland-based research was part of a three year ‘Voices of the Future: Collaborating with children and young people to re-imagine treescapes,’ Project. It was led by Prof Kate Pahl, (Manchester Metropolitan University) and funded through the UKRI ‘Future of UK Treescapes’ Programme. The research was carried out with two primary schools in northeast Scotland, working with children aged six to eleven, over 2 school years. The research focused on how a ‘tree-based’ curriculum could meet different aspects of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), and children and young people’s entitlement for Learning for Sustainability.

The beach-based research comes from a PhD completed by a primary school teacher with her own class in northeast Scotland. A recent change in school meant that a novel opportunity to explore LfS within CfE at the beach arose for a teacher more used to green spaces. Children were given, over a period of three months in midwinter, opportunity to build authentic embodied understanding of themselves with nature through a variety of art-based activities.

From a theoretical and pedagogical perspective, the woodland study drew on Ingold’s dwelling and enskillment perspective, (Ingold, 2000; Kraftl, Ambreem et.al, 2025), Clark’s (2023) call for slow pedagogy, and Bruner’s (1970) conceptualisation of the relationship between enactive, iconic, and symbolic learning. It was also underpinned by the notion that curriculum is emergent rather than fixed and comes to life through action.

The role of drawing in the development of scientific knowledge has a long history and both authors of this paper have an interest in Goethean approaches to science which is underpinned by direct immersion in and observation of the objects of study (Franses & Wride, 2015). According to Anderson-Tempini (2018), Goethe’s belief in the importance of studying the completed form of what lives and grows, as the starting point of enquiry, provides a strong basis for the development of observation through drawing as a pedagogic strategy. In this paper children specifically explore their ecological identity (Thomashow, 1995) in woodland and at the beach through drawing in relation with nature, making connections between their local, northern European, and global contexts.

Many of us acknowledge that critical ecological crises call for a radical shift in ways of thinking, being, and relating to the land and its inhabitants. In the European Commission’s most recent climate change report, commissioner Jessika Roswall urged “a shift of mind set and a transformational step change” (European Commission 2025). Salonen and colleagues (2023) clarified that surface-level changes in economics and technology are insufficient and that deeper changes to “identities, values, ethics, and new worldviews” are required (p. 615). Like others, they identify education as the potent field for these deep transformations. Yet Western-style education is typically framed by particular worldviews, assumptions, and unchecked biases that blinker our capacity to imagine, relate, and heal (Blenkinsop & Kuchta 2024). Exposure to traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) offers one means of seeing beyond the Western ecological blind spots. Learning about TEKs can significantly expand Western epistemologies (in addition to redressing ongoing colonial oppression) by prompting reconsideration of the role of humans, of species hierarchies, of place-based knowledges, of the wholistic nature of education, of the function of time, of linguistic limitations, of the nature of healing, and so on (e.g. Somé, 1997; Sheridan & Longboat, 2006; Kimmerer, 2013 & 2017; Yunkaporta, 2023). In other words, learning about TEKs can help Western learners reconsider their own epistemological and ontological orientations.

However, most TEKs studied in Western education come from the Americas, Africa, and Australia, not Europe (for an exception, see: Kuokkanen, 2000). As a Canadian settler of predominantly Ukrainian and Irish ancestry, I can appreciate, be inspired by, and learn from these TEKs, but I cannot adopt them as my own. I cannot become Anishnaabe, Anu, Dogra, or Apalech. While learning about their TEKs might enable me to see the ecological faultlines in my own ways of being, thinking, and relating, the pathway to my own radical ecological transformation remains unclear. What, then, might enable me to shift from merely recognizing anti-ecological ways to seeing the path forward? What tools, concepts, and values might further my shift into a radically different way of being that is authentic to my own European-Canadian identity?

To answer these questions, I might turn to the TEKs of my own ancestors. In this case, I draw on the deep taproot of my Irish identity, Irish-Celtic values, and Celtic knot designs. Traditional Irish ecological knowledges, in general, and Celtic knots, in particular, are a significantly understudied source of ecological education. In this presentation, I demonstrate how Celtic knots can function as epistemological tools, thinking toys, and playful illustrations of thought that further my own ecological becoming. As John Philip Newell (2021) articulated, “we know things in the core of our being that we have not necessarily been taught, and some of this deep knowing may actually be at odds with what our society or religion has tried to teach us” (p. 1). Reawakening these deeper knowings may reinvigorate a wholeness absent from the often anxious, insecure, lonely, and isolated contemporary Western experience. Ultimately, deep engagement with our own historical identities can lift pervasive epistemological barriers while bringing about deeper healing in identity, cultural understanding, and ecological relationships.