K-11 teachers’ school-based outdoor education practices in the province of Québec, Canada: from local initiatives to a grassroots movement

Abstract

Although the school curriculum of the province of Québec, Canada, does not explicitly encourage teachers to provide outdoor learning experiences, it appears that there is a growing momentum for outdoor education. Thus, the research question that guided this study was: What are preschool, elementary, and secondary teachers’ outdoor education practices in the province of Québec, Canada? To answer this research question, we conducted a survey that collected quantitative data to describe teachers’ intentions, the places they use, the learning that is targeted, and the challenges. We used descriptive statistics to analyze the data. Our results show that school-based outdoor education can realize complementary learning intentions that cannot be met by using only classrooms, that outdoor education can be practiced in a variety of places, regardless of the settings in a school’s immediate surroundings, and that school-based outdoor education has the potential to decrease sedentary behaviours and increase students’ levels of physical activity.