Project

Training Educators to Integrate Outdoor Education into the Curriculum in order to Support Students with Disabilities

Outdoor education has many benefits for students which include improving academic outcomes, engaging a variety of learning styles, decreasing anxiety, increasing the development of social-emotional learning, and helping students make connections between what they are learning and the real world (Burriss & Burriss, 2011; Dillon et al., 2005; Eick, 2011; Edwards-Jones et al., 2018; Farnham & Mutrie, 1997; Guardino et al., 2019; Newman, 2011; Price, 2019; Quibell et al., 2017; Szczytko et al., 2018). Additional benefits specific to students with disabilities are the development of social skills, a decrease in disruptive behavior due to improved communication skills and self-motivated behavior, and an increase in engagement, focus, and attention. For these reasons, outdoor education can support students across multiple aspects of their learning (Edward-Jones et al., 2018; Farnham & Mutrie, 1997; Guardino et al., 2019; Price, 2019; Szczytko et al., 2018). Although there are challenges to using outdoor education in a school setting, there are ways to overcome these barriers and create an effective outdoor learning environment. However, at this time outdoor education is not widely used in schools (Burriss & Burriss, 2011; Williams, 2017). This project is a professional development training that was created to address the limited use of outdoor education in schools and help educators feel more confident in integrating it into their teaching practice in order to support their students with disabilities.

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