A systematic review of forest schools literature in England

Abstract

This paper draws on the breadth of Forest School research literature spanning the past ten years in order to categorise theorisations across the papers. As Forest Schools in the UK are still a fairly recent development research is still limited in quantity and can lack theorisation at a broader level of abstraction. The systematic literature review draws largely on the framework produced by the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre) ([2019b]. What is a Systematic Review? Accessed: 13 August 2020. http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=67). The paper highlights a set of overarching themes for Forest School research as well as providing a conceptual map representing three distinct contexts: early years, special education needs and disability, and formal education. In addition, a set of more abstract themes emerged from work associated with the Forest School space.