Micro-dosing forest school? Children tell us what they think

Defining forest school

FS has been explored and developed as a pedagogy in the UK since the early 1990s (Knight, 2009; O’Brien and Murray, 2007) and mirrors to some extent the increased understanding and profile of social pedagogy (Cameron et al., 2011; Hatton, 2013). Scandinavian uteskole provides the inspiration for much of what has developed in the UK, although the particular context and culture of UK FS is quite different in many respects (Waite et al., 2016). Although interpreted differently by diverse researchers and commentators, FSs have commonalities incorporating a child-centred approach that recognises children as unique individuals and competent explorers of the world that they live in. Adults are facilitators and power is shared as children learn holistically through play, curiosity and hands-on experiential learning in a safe, nurturing environment. The aim of FS is for participants to become healthy, resilient, creative learners who feel connected to, and understand their place within, the natural environment (Forest School Association, n.d.). Ideally FS sessions are regular and long-term; however, one of the driving factors leading to this research article is to explore whether a micro-dose of the FS experience can enable children to connect with nature and to begin to understand their place within it.

Environmental awareness and sense of place

Lifestyles in England have changed significantly in recent years, particularly due to the impact that technology has on work, play and social interactions. One outcome of this is the ‘severing of the bond between children and the natural environment’ (Rodrigues et al., 2016, p. 2). Mycock (2020) suggests that FS offers an opportunity to entirely rethink pedagogy in the Anthropocene era, offering ways of reconnecting children with nature as an autotelic practice, that is something engaged in without consideration of external reward or motivation: ‘Learning is no longer a process that is pre-defined but is motivated and initiated by an individual’s material surroundings that spark thoughts and actions’ (p. 6). This chimes with Salonen et al.’s (2024) ideas of a ‘planetary citizenship where the boundary between humans and the rest of nature disappears’ (p. 2).

There are significant benefits of being outside in nature, for children in particular, as these experiences benefit them cognitively, physically, socially, emotionally and spiritually. Children who play in nature can develop an understanding and love of it that can subsequently lead to a respect and desire to protect the natural environment (Rodrigues et al., 2016). This environmental literacy (Rodrigues et al., 2016) is also encouraged by, among others, David Attenborough, who has stated that ‘bringing nature into the classroom can kindle a fascination and passion for the diversity of life on earth and can motivate a sense of responsibility to safeguard it’ ( https://Foundationyears.org.uk). This has led researchers such as Tiriba (2010) and Sunnevåg and Nordahl (2008) to identify ways of enabling children to reconnect with nature, become active citizens and develop their knowledge of the environment and their place within it.

Coates and Pimlott-Wilson (2019) find that playing in nature helps children to become more aware of the environment and specifically to understand their body’s place within it. This relationship with nature and the emerging sense of place can impact positively in emotional and physical ways and lead to the development of strong social and personal connections (Mackinder, 2017). It has been suggested that these relationships improve in the context of the natural environment due to the relaxed nature of the activities taking place there and the time that is allowed for interaction (Knight, 2009; Hill, 2013).

Social pedagogy

Social pedagogy is a well-established tradition with its own academic and research literature, which has gained currency in the UK more recently (Cameron et al., 2011; Hatton, 2013). Social-constructivist theory overlaps with social pedagogy and very much underpins the FS approach. Children are recognised as meaning-makers and competent learners (Malaguzzi, 2012). They learn within a community that explores together, drawing on curiosity and hands-on experience. Active participation is a key element of FS where ideas and meaning are shaped within a shared space (Dewey, 1956). The child is actively engaged in the real world as opposed to passively receiving instruction, bringing their own knowledge and cultural nuances to the process (Blackham et al., 2023). Communication is key and power is shared as adults become co-learners and facilitators during this process of co-construction (Bruner, 1985; Vygotsky, 1978). ‘By changing the power paradigms, learners and facilitators engage in new ways of pedagogy, promoting congruence and trust’ (Blackham et al., 2023, p. 166). This equal relationship is key in FS where side-by-side playing is a common feature, and children have the opportunities to lead and to teach their peers or adults.

Play

The ethos of freedom within FS allows children to explore their space and interact with it in a way that has meaning and interest for them. This particular ‘learning atmosphere’ (Blackham et al., 2023, p. 162) encourages children to make their own choices and to develop holistically through play, often in contrast to classroom learning that is directed and timetabled by adults. Coates and Pimlott-Wilson (2019) conclude that FS sessions can be seen as a break from routine and an opportunity for children to be in the present moment with time to integrate outside experiences into their existing schemas (Piaget et al., 1929). Play is recognised as a principal tool for experiential learning (Waite, 2010) encompassing elements of problem solving, decision making, exploration, imagination and creativity. There is also a highly social aspect of play as children interact with peers and adults, developing their thinking and social and emotional skills (Rogoff, 2008). Friedman et al.’s (2022) case study with autistic children identified that FS offers opportunities to play and to experiment with interaction in a ‘low-stakes environment’ (p. 17) enabling children to manage their emotions and to self-regulate. Leather (2018) also explores this element of play and experimentation although he also specifically links talk to the process, identifying that the freedom to physically and socially explore and interact enables children to ‘own’ the space.

Risk

Activities within FS encourage children to develop self-awareness through risk-taking (Knight, 2011). The exploratory ethos and freedom to take considered risks provides children with the opportunities to discover how their bodies work, how they fit into the natural space around them and how they can control actions and emotions (Brussoni et al., 2015). These risks will vary from child to child; it might be jumping from a tree, using a tool, holding an insect, or simply being in a woodland space or walking on uneven ground. Harper and Obee (2020) note the risk-averse context of Western approaches to child-learning and play and suggest that, ‘a lack of risky, unstructured and sometimes even unsupervised play, may, in fact, be at a cost to healthy child development (e.g., reduced capacity for judgement, creativity, confidence and potentially increase phobias), and that the perception, or actual risk of injury is an essential element’ (p. 184).

Harper and Obee go on to suggest that children’s play spaces are designed to minimise risk of injury rather than to support child development, and in interviews with forest and nature school practitioners, found that: ‘There was a distinct underlying assumption that children are competent beings; that they have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to manage in activities and environments they are exposed to when developmental norms are taken into consideration’ (p. 188).

In a similar manner, Savery et al. (2016) argue that within the FS environment in particular, children are provided with a ‘healthy approach’ (p. 4) to risk taking through opportunities that allow them to identify, assess and manage situations based on knowledge of their own bodies and needs alongside an understanding of the natural environment.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval for the project was agreed by the Kingston University Research Ethics Committee. We received consent to proceed with the project through our initial contact with the school’s senior management team and worked with the class teachers and teaching assistants to obtain signed and dated assent from parents and carers and consent from the individual children. Consents and assents included permission to use information gathered in the findings phase, including some feedback in the form of pictures. We received no funding for this project. The researchers have links with the school through previous FS days with a range of classes.

The school

The school is a local authority grant-maintained one-form-entry primary school in south London, retaining an ‘Outstanding’ grading in the most recent report from the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. The FS cohort were all year 3 pupils, aged between seven and eight years. The class is divided in two for teaching purposes, with two class teachers, two teaching assistants and an emotional literacy support assistant. The school offers a wide range of teaching and pastoral activity and has links with other local primary and secondary schools, with some links to private providers in the local area. It is a UNICEF’s rights-respecting school; inclusion and diversity are actively celebrated and supported. The school has around 240 pupils, of which around 34 per cent are eligible for pupil premium payments, which reflects some of the disadvantage that the school community experiences and is much higher than the national rate of around 24 per cent (Clark, 2024; Department for Education, 2024).

The Department for Education (2024) publishes detailed information for all maintained schools in England. We do not provide links to the relevant data page as that would run the risk of breaching the confidentiality of pupils, parents and staff. The data shows that there are slightly more girls than boys in the school. Pupils with special education needs and disabilities (SEND) who have an education, health and care plan represent 4.7 per cent of the school population, which is nearly double the national average of 2.5 per cent. Pupils who have English and an additional language (EAL) represent 67 per cent of the population, far exceeding the national average of 22 per cent and even the London average of 44 per cent. In this particular class, more than half of pupils are eligible for free school meals (53 per cent), there are higher levels of SEND (40 per cent) and of EAL (87 per cent). Statistics only tell part of the story; our impression is of a lively and creative class who have strong support from their teachers, teaching assistants and the wider school community, including of course their parents and carers.

Appreciative inquiry

As noted earlier we recognise that children are ‘competent social actors’ (Dockett et al., 2011, p. 13). We have chosen appreciative inquiry as our research method as it has been previously adapted for children in education settings (Davies, 2013; Lewis, 2015), and we acknowledge the influence of social constructivist theories as initially described by Vygotsky (1978). We believe that this research method strongly aligns with social pedagogy traditions and practices.

As described by Cooperrider and Srivastva (1987) appreciative inquiry is an action research method of enquiry that focuses on recognising what is working well, what has enabled this to happen and what would contribute to its improvement. There are four stages in the process, as described by Bushe (2011):

1. discovery phase: define what we are learning about

2. dream phase: discover our findings

3. design phase: envisage how we could develop what we are doing

4. destiny phase: disseminate the results.

In our example, the discovery phase includes both the actual FS experience and the first part of the worksheet that we designed to get the children’s feedback and ideas. We will briefly describe how the day went and then move on to the appreciative inquiry element of the project.

The discovery phase

Setting up the FS day involved working with staff to ensure we obtained written permission from parents and carers to go ahead, and at the same time ensuring everyone, including the children, were provided with information about the research element. We planned travel arrangements and what children would need to participate (appropriate clothing and lunch). The pupils travelled to the Kingston Hill campus by public transport and walked to the site. Our usual site had not been used since the pandemic and was somewhat overgrown and lacked sufficient space to be able to freely move around. Fortunately, the campus has quite extensive grounds, so we decided in advance to use another site. The area is large, fairly open and surrounded by trees (see Figure 1). There is no such thing as an ideal FS site. Interactions, learning and play are created by the participants, so the change was not significant.

Figure 1

The forest school site 

We had a purposely limited plan for the day and knew that it would include a quick briefing about what the children could and could not do in the space, and how to be careful around fire when toasting smores (toasted marshmallows in biscuits). We suggested some activities that they might enjoy, but the main aim of our sessions is to let children create their own spontaneous play. Our experience is that children are endlessly creative in these spaces and we are reminded of Malaguzzi’s 100 languages of children (Edwards et al., 2012) that highlights the numerous ways in which children are capable of drawing on their own resources when engaging in learning and creativity. On previous occasions children tend to make use of what they find on the site in creative ways, with minimal adult suggestions.

We collected the children from the bus stop outside the university. In previous years we had discussed the journey many times with different staff, and had been worried about the connections, taking children across busy roads and so forth. That was very much an adult perspective, and not at all what the children were interested in, which was the adventure of going on a journey. They are generally excited about going to a new place and ask many questions. We ensure everyone goes to the toilet before we go to the site and there are some health-and-safety issues that we must take into account. As noted by Beck and Ritter (1992) modernity creates the risk society, which extends into learning contexts. We had already completed the required risk assessments (both in the school and at the university) and we moved on to telling the children (and adults) about the boundaries of our site, rules of fire and related risks. Most of these were presented as a game; for example, if a child was further away from the group than they should be, we practised as a whole group shouting back so we could find them. We had one structured activity – making smores – and the rest of our time was dedicated to the children making their own use of the space as they saw fit. Rather than being dismissive of health and safety we can use it as a valid expression of pastoral care as described by Kyriacou (2009) as long as we maintain a social pedagogical ethos.

As equal participants in the FS our Haltung (Charfe and Gardner, 2020) should of course encourage us to welcome and celebrate the fact that children bring their own worldview to any situation, even where, as we hopefully demonstrate below, what they bring might not fit comfortably with the expectations of FS. We have seen all sorts of play types (Paatsch et al., 2023) on our FS days and celebrate them all. The most important thing is that these are child-led. It is inspiring to see the creativity that children bring to unstructured play with minimal boundaries. Minimal equipment is also involved as we generally bring very little, apart from some string and scissors on occasion. Sticks are of course freely available but only allowed if foraged, and these are put to a lot of different uses. The principles of FS focus us on respecting the environment and leaving the site as we find it (Knight, 2009). This was explained to the children and modelled throughout the session. For the majority of the children the woods were an unknown environment and for all the children FS was a new experience, so it was necessary for the adults to support them in understanding how to respect the trees, plants and animals living in this space. Our expectations in this regard were high as we hoped that through this experience the children would develop a love of the natural environment and ultimately want to protect it, and indeed our assumption was that this would be their starting point in any event. Some examples of activities from this particular day include the following.

A mature tree had been blown over on the site and was at an angle to the ground. The children started to climb this and soon found how high they could get with some testing and discussion. Once they were at a suitable launching pad it was a short step to jumping off. A queue quickly formed to take turns, but this also involved some adaptations. The boys started to jump in the style of football players’ goal-scoring celebrations and shouted out who they were imitating as they went. They seemed to have a huge store of these celebrations as they rarely repeated footballers’ names, and the activity went on for quite some time; they might have been thinking about this while in the queue. While this activity mostly involved the boys, some of the girls also took part. One girl with limited mobility was determined to take part and was unquestioningly supported by all concerned to do so.

The children also created bug hotels and various improvised structures in the space (see Figure 2). From previous days we know that children often start off concerned about dirt and touching insects (see Figure 3), but this generally wears off after a time. Children become engaged in finding bugs and insects, digging for them or finding them in trees and often overcome their initial fear and share them. Bugs, such as woodlice (see Figure 2), are passed from hand to hand, invariably with a lot of care. On this particular day they found quite a few small caterpillars and, as they often do, spontaneously created bug hotels (see Figure 3). These developed into increasingly complex structures, and this was a common pattern for all their activities. Children’s creativity, when allowed with minimal instructions and no particular end in mind, flourishes. Play is both solitary and social, with discussions, explanations and interactions freely taking place with minimal adult input.

Figure 2

Finding minibeasts 

Figure 3

Creating bug hotels 

The most structured activity is the use of fire. We bring a small fire pit, and every child gets to make a smore. This is much more regulated than anything else we do and naturally requires preparation and detailed safety instructions for the children. We also have to ensure that the marshmallows and biscuits we use are all halal.

The appreciative inquiry class activity

Data findings

The first stage of analysis of the questions from the children’s forms that were completed in the second discovery phase was to identify keywords that had been used and to note their usage frequency. Data gathered from observations of, and interactions with, the children were also drawn on to provide triangulation when discussing and further analysing the findings (see Table 1).

Question 1: ‘The thing I liked best about forest school was …’

The children identified that they had enjoyed all the activities they engaged in during the FS taster day. Words that had the highest frequency of use in the forms were ‘climbing and jumping’, ‘marshmallows’, ‘bug hotel’ and ‘caterpillars’. Children were also observed participating enthusiastically in these activities by the researchers, as described in the first discovery phase. Other words used fairly frequently were ‘building a city’, ‘playing with a friend’ and ‘digging’; one child stated that ‘no boring work’ was the best thing: ‘The tree climbing and making cities for a bug and roasting marshmallows’ (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

Child’s feedback to question 1 

Question 2: ‘Forest school would be even better if …’

Answers to this question were varied and included practical elements, such as having lunch inside and having more marshmallows to toast. Some answers were creative but demonstrated a lack of understanding (or perhaps a sense of humour!) from the children with regard to the natural environment of this particular FS; for example, one child said that they would like to have sloths in the woods, and another asked for softer branches. The majority of answers to this question focused on play equipment such as slides, monkey bars, a football pitch, trampoline, bikes and scooters (see Figure 5). Children clearly bring their own context. Some children showed concern for the insects and animals in the woodland and stated that it would be better if there were more ‘things’ for the animals, with one child in particular suggesting a bug house: ‘There was a little playground and a challenge which we have to build with sticks in groups’; and ‘It had a swing or football pitch or the branches could have been a little softer.’

Figure 5

Child’s feedback to question 2 

Question 3: ‘I think the most important things about forest school are …’

Again, the answers here were predominantly (16 of 27 responses) concerned with taking care of the space, and the insects and bugs in particular (see Figure 6). Having fun was mentioned 13 times with some overlaps: ‘that we can do whatever what we want’ and ‘learning and exploring’. This was also confirmed by observations and discussions had with the children and their teachers at the FS as well as during the researchers’ visit to the school afterwards. A few responses noted the importance of having adults around and being conscious of ‘dangerous things’.

Figure 6

Child’s feedback to question 3 

Question 4: ‘My newspaper headline would be …’

As might be expected some headlines were along the lines of ‘THE BEST TRIP EVER IN WORLD HISTORY Y3s !!!’ Many responses were about having fun, eating marshmallows and relaxing and not having to do lessons (see Figure 7). Again, children brought in their own social context, borrowing from social media and pop culture: ‘The Forest School and [school name] collab’. Several responses reiterated the themes of taking care of the natural environment and insects in particular: ‘Super school. Save insects’; ‘Forest School lets you eat marshmallows!!!’; ‘You don’t need to do lessons’; ‘Relaxing Forest School. FUN!’; ‘The exploring Forest School’; and ‘Many people should take care of animals and creatures to make sure no one should kill living creatures and take care of them.’

Figure 7

Child’s feedback to question 4 

Question 5: ‘I would like to tell other people …’

Again, similar themes emerge here about having fun, eating marshmallows, climbing trees and looking after insects. One child interpreted the question as wanting to tell ‘my mum’. There were some interesting comments from children who had taken away new learning that they wanted to share, for example: ‘if you like bugs there are many, if you don’t they don’t bite. You can terrifically toast marshmallows.’

Again, a sense of enthusiasm was a constant, and sometimes indications of a lack of previous engagement in the natural environment: ‘that I went to Forest School and it was so amazing you should have seen it you can climb the logs’ and ‘that it is fun because there are loads of creatures and nature’ (see Figure 8).

They also want others to know about the variety of bugs that are there, that they are safe to be with and that they need looking after: ‘To make insects live for many years.’

Figure 8

Child’s feedback to question 5 

Question 6: ‘I will do this by …’

This question was different in context from the other five on the form as it related specifically to the destiny phase. The children identified a variety of ways that they wanted to share their thoughts about FS, but the clear message coming through was that they very much wanted others to know about their experience and what they had learned from it: ‘I will do this by telling people it is amazing and talking on the news’ (see Figure 9). The children were very inventive in the range of ways they wanted to tell other people, including inviting ‘random visitors’, going to different people in different places to spread the word (Luton was mentioned for some reason), making a fun poster, getting a microphone and going on stage, telling stories, going on the news, posting it (presumably on social media), using billboards and writing a leaflet. Some children responded in this section with the message that they would share and the key themes coming through from this were about care for the environment, play, exploration and having fun: ‘Convincing them to go to the amazing Forest School with me and I can give them a letter. DON’T KILL INSECTS!’; ‘Using that time to play and my favourite bit eating MARSHAMLLOW [MARSHMALLOWS]!’; ‘convincing people that it is super fun you should go there’; ‘convincing them to be kind to the bugs and not to kill them and nature’; and ‘talk to people to go there and look carefully so the tiny insects won’t die.’

Figure 9

Child’s feedback to question 6