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Outdoor equipment lending is emerging as a collaborative consumption practice in Norway’s sharing economy, potentially providing a solution to the adverse climate and environmental impacts connected with the country’s outdoor culture. Little is known, however, of how to upscale such practices when owning equipment is culturally embedded. This article contributes to an emerging literature on how emotions, knowledge, and environmental values may contribute to participation in collaborative consumption and responds to calls for research on cultural and contextual elements of sharing practices. Through ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, we explore the outdoor equipment lending outlet TURBO in the city of Tromsø, Norway. We ask, how can collaborative consumption of equipment provide a sustainable solution to the societal goal of democratic participation in outdoor life. Building on practice theory, our analyses reveal a shift in focus from low-income and immigrant families to broader outreach and inclusion of many new user groups. In the encounters taking place at TURBO, emotions of trust and affinity, knowledge of how to access the outdoors, and environmental values are shared in dynamic interaction between lenders and borrowers. The direct effect on private consumption lies outside the scope of this research, but we argue that collaborative consumption of equipment provides potential climate and environmental benefits through the lending of donated equipment, by extending life cycles of equipment through reuse and repair, and when borrowing equipment supersedes traditional consumption. Moreover, the practices at TURBO destigmatise borrowing instead of buying and contribute to the democratisation of the outdoors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractInteractive technology has a complicated relationship with recreation in nature. Many people have praised, and many have lamented the impact of interactive technology on recreation in nature. Because nature recreation has important wellness benefits and interactive technology is likely to remain a part of nature recreation, there is a need to design interactive technology for nature recreation. Unfortunately, little generalized knowledge exists on how to design such technology. We create new intermediate design knowledge for interactive technology in nature recreation by drawing from others’ work, our prior work, and specifically Borgmann and Verbeek’s philosophies of technology. Our contribution is a framework based on a decomposition of engagement into nine facets related to engagement with place, time, and community. Four examples demonstrate the descriptive and generative power of the framework. This framework may enable the creation of interactive systems that complement rather than compete with nature recreation and may better preserve the wellness benefits of nature recreation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore motivations for the use and non-use of headphones while hiking. In order to understand why people bring, or don't bring, headphones while hiking we analyzed 247 written responses to the question "why do you prefer to bring (or not bring) headphones when hiking?" We study headphones, rather than other forms of interactive computing like mobile phones, because headphone use and non-use splits survey respondents nearly in half with 51.5% stating that they do prefer to bring headphones while hiking and 48.5% stating that they do not. Those who bring headphones did so to enhance their hike by listening to music or other audio and to avoid social interaction. Those who do not bring headphones do so to fully enjoy the sounds of nature, to invite social interaction and to increase safety. Our results suggest that within the context of hiking as constructed in the United States, use and non-use decisions are motivated by shaping the intended hiking experience, social factors and safety. We view these motivations for non-use not as obstacles to be overcome in the proliferation of technology into hiking, but as nuanced themes to be considered as part of understanding technology in the broader context of hiking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many previous studies have measured elementary-aged students' connection to nature (CTN), but few have explicitly considered how the use of different terminology (e.g. 'nature' versus 'the outdoors') can influence those connections. We utilized a quasi-experimental design to test for differences in affective and self-reported connections to nature among diverse groups of fourth and fifth grade students from two elementary schools in Wake County, North Carolina. We used Mann–Whitney U tests to compare these outcomes between two versions of a survey, one using the word 'nature' (n = 112) and one using the word 'outdoors' (n = 113), for (1) the whole sample (n = 225) (2) between boys and girls, and (3) between students of color and white students. Self-reported CTN did not vary significantly based on terminology used, but we did find some differences in levels of emotional affinity that students associated with each term. Our results suggest that the differences in which young audiences perceive the terms 'nature' versus 'outdoors' are nuanced and may offer insight into how language about the environment may invoke different emotions among children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding heat stress in dairy cows is important for ensuring their welfare and productivity. While the Temperature Humidity Index is commonly used to determine heat stress conditions it does not consider outdoor factors (e.g. wind speed and solar radiation). To address this, the Grazing Heat Load Index (GHLI) which predicts respiration rate, an indicator of heat stress, was previously developed using data from the Waikato region in New Zealand. This study updated the GHLI using a weather data and animal heat stress indicators (e.g. respiration rate and drooling), collected from dairy herds in the Northland, Waikato, Canterbury, and Southland regions. A mixed-effects linear model, which included air temperature, solar radiation and wind speed as inputs was developed using data from these diverse locations. The updated model slightly outperformed the previous model on a validation dataset when predicting respiration rate. While air temperature remained the primary driver of respiration rate, solar radiation was an exacerbating factor, whereas wind exerted a mitigating effect. Challenges persist in characterising heat stress in conditions such as high wind speed. Non-linear modelling techniques could enhance the predictive capability of the GHLI model, thereby refining heat stress assessment in pasture-based dairy systems nationwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThe purpose of this qualitative constructivist grounded theory study was to develop a model to explain potential mechanisms of change in the nature-based pediatric occupational therapy process, based on analysis of the perspectives of occupational therapy practitioners currently engaging in nature-based practice with children. Using 27 photos and interview data from 22 participants the Ecology of Change in Outdoor Therapy (ECO-Therapy) Model was developed. The model suggests mechanisms of change in nature-based pediatric occupational therapy may involve six iterative phases: Longing for Freedom, Embarking on Adventure, Dancing with Nature, Claiming Self-Agency, Braving Real-Life Challenges, and Growing Adaptive Capacity. The practitioner and child experiencing these phases throughout the nature-based occupational therapy process may lead to improved participation and performance in the child’s daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States, leaving survivors with profound mobility challenges that impact independent community ambulation. Evidence shows assistance at the hip during walking may be beneficial for stroke survivors. In this cross-over design study, we examine the impact of a novel hip exoskeleton on both functional and patient reported outcomes measuring speed, fall risk, gait symmetry, energy expenditure and perceived walking ability during both indoors and outdoors in single and serial counting dual task paradigms. Nine ambulatory stroke survivors with hemiplegia were included. No differences were seen between the exoskeleton and baseline conditions for any outcomes. Only the patient reported outcome in which subjects were asked to rate their ability to walk outdoors approached statistical significance (p = 0.051) with greater improvement reported for the exoskeleton condition. When asked to rate several key factors about the exoskeleton, weight and assistance emerged as primary perceived negative factors of the exoskeleton underscoring the need for improvements to the technology in this area. Despite lack of differences across groups, some individuals responded positively to the exoskeleton for several functional outcomes measured, highlighting the need for additional exploration into the use of personalized hip exoskeletons for post-stroke rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue integrates gender analysis into the global history of outdoor activities in the Age of Empire by focusing on masculinities, a field that has received renewed attention from scholars. The premise of the special issue is that social constructions of masculinities in imperial settings functioned twofold. They operated simultaneously as methods to spread Western-colonial hegemonic values and as a means to expand territorial domains into far-off lands. In examining outdoor experiences, without taking the dominance of 'imperial' men over non-Europeans for granted, the contributions here presented develop an intersectional understanding of the conditions in which fashioning and self-perception of masculine roles were constantly contested and negotiated. Outdoor experiences, as seen in this special issue, were formative spaces of empire: while made possible thanks to the wide imperial networks in the colonial world, they existed on the margins of imperial rule. At the 'frontier' and in colonial battle-grounds, but also as leisure or free-time activities in transcultural contexts, outdoor experiences served to transform boys into men, and for men to test and perform hegemonic ideas of manhood and hence of imperial power. The essays are in two sections that highlight the dual processes of being and becoming 'manly' in the imperial outdoors. The first four contributions focus on archetypical roles of adult men in empires: the mountaineer, the hunter, the sportsman and the soldier. The second section approaches cases of scouting as formative spaces for boys in contexts of decolonisation in the early 1900s. The case-studies included in this special issue cover multiple imperial formations from the American Midwest, the Middle East to the British and Dutch Indies. These diverse cases serve to open up often Anglo-centric historiographies of gender and empire by emphasising the global momentum of new masculinities that were embedded in a trans-imperial fashion between ca. 1860 and 1960. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between outdoor sports and the age of empire on the American frontier using the lens of gender performance. Focused on the years from the mid to the late nineteenth century, it provides an exploration of hunting as a vector of imperial masculine journey and a physical and imaginative pursuit where hunters stalked and shot the iconic animals of the western states on behalf of settler colonialism. In the first part of the paper, contemporary testimonies are used to plot the ways in which hunting desires to own the animal body fuelled a powerful homosocial culture grounded in ideas of primal pageantry. Sport and game in this context represented essential elements of a performative leisure economy in which pursuit and capture dictated the terms of human-animal engagement and refracted broader impositions of colonial political authority. From here, it turns to dynamics of community on the game trail where the primacy of the sporting hero was confirmed and recalibrated along racial, class and gender lines, before travelling indoors to examine how the afterlife of the hunt (expressed in taxidermy) allowed the authority of the victorious hunter to be performed in the 'great indoors' and for colonial claims over space to be materially and symbolically affirmed. Today, the stories of the imperial hunter elite and their taxidermy trophies represent traumatic historical artefacts. However, they also denote important remnants of empire whose complicated provenance helps to explain how mutually supportive mechanisms of masculinity and colonialism operated to sanction the killing and (later) the conservation of game species. Offering a closer look at 'the bison in the room' and its embodied story of pursuit and capture, this paper provides valuable insights into the dynamics of sport in colonial space and the value of performance as a useful category for contextualising human-environmental relations in the age of empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unfamiliar Landscapes is a collection of texts from academics and practitioners that explores the relationship between young people and unfamiliar landscapes. The book challenges established norms and encourages a more inclusive approach to outdoor engagement for young people. In this review essay I reflect on my own experiences of the outdoors focusing on themes prominent within the book: the importance of engaging diverse groups in the outdoors, landscapes as sensed across multiple registers, and the role of adults in mediating young people's relationships with landscapes. The book provides an invaluable contribution to current debates in a range of disciplines and contexts highlighting the importance of understanding young people's varied experiences and how they engage with unfamiliar landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest schools are distinctive outdoor spaces that are often regarded as an alternative to mainstream education. Their increasing popularity in the United Kingdom is often attributed to a perceived decrease in children's outdoor play, due to a concomitant increase in children's use of digital technologies in the home; further compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. This study explores how iPads can enhance outdoor learning activities. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 Key Stage 2 children selected from two UK primary schools. The interviews explored the experiences and opinions of the children about the role of iPads in the forest school space using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Findings suggest that Forest School spaces can accommodate new technologies through accommodation of the outdoor environment and technology. Suggestions for future research include the meaningful integration of iPads into Forest School practice while considering the relative influences of space and place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daily plans are the key tool for teachers to ensure their delivery meets the expectations of the programme, and math activities are one of the important activities required to be offered daily in the early years to form the foundations of future math knowledge. As outdoor environments provide various learning opportunities, assessing the math activities offered in daily plans is necessary, in part to review teachers' practices. Therefore, analysing the preschool teachers' daily plans was the aim of this research. Semi-structured interviews with preschool teachers and some shared daily plan examples were used to collect data. The findings show a discrepancy between teachers' statements and the plans used. Although the participating teachers pointed to the use of the outdoors for math activities, the shared daily plans were limited in practice in their use of the out-of-classroom opportunities. The daily plans that teachers offered were mainly paper-based classroom activities instead of illustrating a broad use of various learning environments and opportunities. This finding indicates that preschool teachers might benefit from professional development courses that encourage them to address the early mathematics needs of children in their daily plans and through pedagogic practices that use a wide range of outdoor learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a personal account of loss and how improvised movement in a studio and outdoors offered sacred holding through grieving. The author shares vivid descriptive accounts of dancing through grief, 'at the edge' as she calls it; yielding to gravity and meeting the stories, memories and emotions that flooded and engulfed her in the wake of the loss of her mother. Losing a loved one is an existential experience all of us must face one day. This intimate presentation of the author's experience invites the reader to consider how looking death and traumatic loss in the face, turning to empathy and compassion for ourself and to an embodied ecological practice, cracks us open and creates the ground for a reconfiguration of self. Such a sensory arriving to the power of the more-or-other-than human may serve us professionally, she argues, at times of overwhelm such as those we are living through currently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with new materialist posthumanist philosophy to conceptually approach an ethics of outdoor environmental education with the focus on a pupil's body. Thinking with place-responsive pedagogy, I aim to extend a conversation toward exploring a child's body as a place. Place-responsive pedagogy, while it challenges a commonly endorsed child/brain/self/anthropocentrism by paying more attention to a place, its history, and human-nonhuman entanglements, still positions children as intellectual observers (of places) and multisensorial body-mind thinkers. I propose to attend to pupils/their movements as to ontogenetic phenomena. These phenomena necessarily emerge from the surplus of child-place relations. They are intelligent, complex, transmogrifying, attuning with the emerging ecologies, and growing with/from a place. Such conceptualisation disrupts an often-empty rhetoric that 'humans are part of nature', offering an account of an (onto)ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing concern about the ways in which neoliberalism is impacting Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), particularly in relation to infants and toddlers. The neoliberal agenda positions the outdoors as risky and a place to be physically active, potentially excluding the youngest children from these spaces. Drawing upon case study data from a larger project exploring outdoor provision for infants and toddlers in England, we demonstrate the critical leadership role owner/managers can play. They do this by creating different kinds of pedagogic spaces (cultural, physical and reflective) for practitioners to develop their outdoor practices. We argue that the creation of such spaces requires explicit acts of resistance and disruption to neoliberal understandings about the place of infants and toddlers outdoors. Our research demonstrates the potential for owner/managers to act as critical pedagogues creating spaces called hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locus of Control (LOC) is measured by a brief survey designed to determine an 'internal' or 'external' locus. Internal LOC signifies ownership of the consequences of one's actions. Individuals with a more internal LOC tend to have higher determents of positive mental health. This study investigated the impact on the LOC of university students after a 25-day program focused on adventure-based eco-tourism where the participants hiked, camped, white water rafted and took part in other adventure-based activities. We found the results further support previous studies that determined adventure programs enhanced internality measured quantitatively through Locus of Control. Qualitative responses indicated greater self-reliance due to enhanced belief in ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple studies have proven the multiple health benefits of engaging children outdoors, and in activities such as gardening. Of utmost importance is staying safe while outside. This column addresses three, year round aspects of outdoor safety, sun, plants, and insects. The brief annotated bibliography covers sites focused on information and education for families, educators, and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the contribution that Outdoor Learning Development (LDO) makes to a university postgraduate programme in Human Resource Development for international students with work experience. It establishes the rationale for LDO inclusion based on notable research contributions and differentiates the role and format of this event from conventional outdoor management development programmes through a focus on self-organized learning. The progression from individual learning to intra-group learning over the three days of the event is based on the interplay of action, theoretical inputs and self-evaluation. An emphasis is placed on purposeful conversation for shared learning, systems thinking and personal responsibility for seeking collaboration – essential elements in the life of real organizations. Individual reflective capability and group conversational processes for enhanced learning skills are stimulated in follow-up discussion after LDO with video input on key incidents. The learning achieved is generally observed to be beyond what conventional classroom activities can offer and sets in motion new thinking to consolidate and apply academic knowledge across the whole programme, providing a stimulus to career development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the findings of a narrative review of international research literature about babies' and toddlers' engagement with the outdoor environment whilst attending ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) settings. Based on the in-depth review of 21 papers, it identifies four dominant themes in the literature: the outdoors as a space to be physically active, the outdoors as a risky space, the challenge of creating an appropriate outdoor environment and the significance of the practitioner outdoors. The article argues that there is a need to re-conceive the ways in which the youngest children engage with the outdoors and to move beyond possible narratives of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to segment visitors to a Greek theme park using factors that motivate attendance. Three hundred and twenty-two young and adult visitors of an outdoor recreational theme park, located in the midlands of Greece, completed a questionnaire that measured four dimensions: motivation, service quality perceptions, intention to revisit, and word-of-mouth communication. A principal component analysis of the motivation items revealed a clear five-factor structure. Thereafter, a cluster analysis of the five factors was performed. This classified participants into three psychographic segments: "incurious to activities and social life", "recreation and nature oriented", and "outdoor activities enthusiast". An analysis of variance test successfully validated the three segments relative to visitors' perceptions of service quality and future behavioural intentions. Theme park management can use this study's newly developed visitor segmentation to better understand, commercialise, and personalise their services. Managers can more effectively execute visitor management strategies to attract customers and develop marketing techniques to create new competitors' advantages. The study successfully developed three validated psychographic theme park visitor segments: "incurious to activities and social life", "recreation and nature oriented", and "outdoor activities enthusiast". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For individuals experiencing poverty and homelessness, acting out their lives in public spaces can be complicated, as their very existence might be viewed as a transgression of a spaces' conceptualization [Lefebvre, H. 1991. The Production of Space. London: Blackwell.]. Within this paper, through the work of Henri Lefebvre and Don Mitchell, I examine the ways in which representations of public outdoor spaces in cities impact the lived experiences of those who engage with the sites as a means of survival. Through this work, I argue that the right to be is reliant on an individual's ability to acceptably (re)produce spaces as they were conceived, or to otherwise be forced to exist in marginal spaces [Mitchell, D., and N. Heynen. 2009. "The Geography of Survival and the Right to the City: Speculation on Surveillance, Legal Innovation, and the Criminalization of Intervention." Urban Geography 30 (6): 611–632. doi:10.2747/0272-3638.30.6.611; Snow, D., and M. Mulcahy. 2001. "Space, Politics, and the Survival Strategies of the Homeless." American Behavioral Scientist 45 (1): 149–169. doi:10.1177/00027640121956962]. The empirical insights in this work emerged from nine months of field work at Start Me Up Niagara, a community centre in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, which works with people experiencing poverty and homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of ethnographic research, this contribution focuses on slacklining, highlighting the cultural feature of urban escapism in a renewed relationship with nature: practitioners consider slacklining a tool for a critique of the 'modern life' and urban rhythm. Undertaken far from green spaces, these activities represent a discontinuity with the urban dynamics. Outdoor activities respond to the planned division between productive/reproductive activities, and they are functional in a governmental rationale of bodies and the city. This ambiguity permits slacklining to explore the outdoors encounters, highlighting how the distinction between 'urban' and 'natural' sites poses the foundation of the normativity of performances, practices, subjects. In the entanglements of the nature-urban distinction, dynamics of power and resistance take shape in a continuous production of the urban space, highlighting the creative potential and limits of outdoor activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this critical commentary, we propose that 'the outdoors' is a contested leisure terrain that is both a space for freedom, relaxation and enjoyment, and, at the same time, a site of exclusion, hierarchy and discrimination. We review some of the well-established benefits of outdoor leisure in relation to physical and mental health, well-being and personal development. However, these benefits are not equally accessible to all, with many groups and individuals reporting feeling excluded from leisure in the outdoors. Drawing on the context of the UK, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating these divisions, as outdoor leisure takes on added significance during times of lockdown. Nevertheless, we suggest that the pandemic may also offer an opportunity to rethink outdoor leisure and 'the outdoors' as a leisure space in more inclusive and accessible ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses two U.S. films – Nebraska (2013) and The Straight Story (1999) – to examine the centrality and framing power of hegemonic white masculinity for common conceptions in the United States of the outdoors. While both white male filmmakers portray white men rendered vulnerable to outdoor extremes by advanced age, they also depict common white American male perspectives on geographical space, and on one's own supposedly appropriate role as a central actor in it, a phenomenon labelled 'white male spatiality'. While Nebraska's central character remains ensnared in a damaging conception of land, himself and his relation to others, The Straight Story's protagonist demonstrates an approach to the outdoors that breaks free of self-serving appropriation, thereby promoting apprehension of others, land and the universe on something more like their own terms, as well as outdoor leisure practices that are more inclusive and reparative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a significant toll on people's health and wellbeing globally. In the pandemic, parks, gardens and other local green spaces have been recognised as vital to people's physical and mental health. Emerging global evidence shows increased access to local parks and recreational activities and a new appreciation of the natural surroundings. Various movements and organisations globally have called for actions to embrace recent trends and changes in relation to the planning of public spaces and urban built environments to enable better access to parks and nature. The crisis, however, has exposed the inequities around access to green space where vulnerable populations such as older people and those in low socioeconomic areas are particularly affected. The crisis presents an opportunity to positively impact on society, and an opportunity to consolidate new emerging trends to better integrate nature into the architecture, infrastructure, and public spaces of urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women continue to remain underrepresented in geoscience degree attainment. Several disciplines (specifically geology) require participation in 'field experiences' in which students and faculty engage for weeks in a remote location to study geologic processes. Although any student is welcome to participate, studies find evidence of these outdoor spaces embodying a masculine domain. In this exploratory study, we examine the exclusive and inclusive gendered discourses used by 15 faculty and 36 students in the US that describe their perception of women doing geology fieldwork. Using a STEMinism framework, we analyse the exclusive and inclusive gendered discourse as it falls into three categories: natural/essentialized differences, individual preferences, and socialization. Our findings reveal the persistence of an exclusive gendered discourse, yet also indicate that gendered assumptions are being challenged through an inclusive discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to determine associations between weather and playground surface conditions and time spent outdoors and in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) in preschool children aged 3–6 years. We included 1201 children (mean age 4.8 years, 51% boys) from 68 preschools in Norway who provided 12,030 days of observation during 2015–2016. Preschool MVPA was measured by accelerometry (ActiGraph GT3X+) for 10 consecutive weekdays. During this period, outdoor time and playground surface conditions were logged by staff and weather conditions were obtained from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. Associations were determined using linear mixed models. Associations for MVPA depended on whether the analyses were adjusted for outdoor time or not. In unadjusted analyses, rainfall, wind, and wet, icy, and mixed playground conditions were negatively associated with MVPA, while temperature, snowfall, and dry playground conditions were positively associated with MVPA. In adjusted analyses, temperature and wet and mixed playground conditions were negatively associated with MVPA, while snowfall and dry and snowy playground conditions were positively associated with MVPA. Outdoor time and MVPA should be addressed simultaneously to inform interpretation of associations with weather characteristics and intervention development in early childhood education settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risky play is defined as thrilling and challenging forms of play that have the potential for physical injury and has been linked to development and health benefits for children in the early years. These benefits include risk-assessment skills, increased physical activity and well-being, and promoting social competencies and resilience. Currently, in a Western context, children's opportunities for risky play are decreasing and at the same time, childhood inactivity and coinciding health concerns are on the rise. Risky play may help ameliorate some current health problems for children. This research aimed to increase understanding of how children use affordances (environmental factors that intersect with and influence human behaviours) for risky play. Physical environmental factors have been found to influence children's affordances for all play, including risky play. The study employed a deductive analysis of participant-observer field notes and focused-video observations in order to identify how children utilize indoor and outdoor environmental features for risky play. Data was interpreted through Gibson's theory of affordances and was then fit to established taxonomies of environments for children's risky play. Research was conducted with children, ages 3–4 years, at a kindergarten in Norway. Findings identified environmental affordances for risky play that were actualized by children in this study. We propose that findings from this study may be useful in considering the physical design of early childhood education play spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research highlights that children across the UK access the outdoors less than previous generations, often at levels below that prescribed by the United Nations as a basic level of outdoor access for prisoners. School staff and parents are intrinsic partners in facilitating children's access to the outdoors and the associated learning opportunities it presents. There exists however a complex set of relationships and perceptions governing the dynamics of these relationships and the resultant access to opportunities presented by learning outdoors. This paper aims to explore these perceptions by examining data collected through a combination of questionnaires and interviews with parents and teachers. The results indicate a significant disconnect in parent and teacher perceptions related to the purpose and opportunities for learning outdoors. These findings have a range of important implications for early childhood educators, parents and others looking to promote the outdoors as a learning environment across the foundation stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a nascent, primarily online community of so-called 'unlikely hikers', united in the premise that hiking is good for everyone's mental and physical health and that diversity can and should extend to outdoor spaces including national parks. However, the ways in which hikers have hitherto been represented in outdoors media, advertising, and wider social imaginaries present potent barriers to participation. The paper traces the discursive origins and positioned ideologies of 'the outdoors' in former British settler colonies, particularly the USA, showing how national parks maintain legacies of frontier colonialism and default understandings of legitimate outdoorspeople as necessarily White, able-bodied, straight, and male. These legacies are then traced through four years of online ethnographic data (2015–2018), comprising multimedia narratives of fat hikers, solo women hikers including lesbian women, and hikers of colour as they relate their outdoor experiences on Instagram and related podcasts, blogs, and magazine articles. The discussion is theorized using Holman Jones and Harris's notion of queering and Urry's mobilities paradigm, and 'queer mobilities' is proposed as part of an activism and amplification aimed at queering the trail both within and beyond academic spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the views and attitudes of a small group of teachers concerning the early years outdoor teaching and learning environment. Further their responses are compared to an online survey of teachers examining their attitudes to the early years outdoor environment. This extends the current knowledge as to the drivers for teachers' professed actions when working in the early years outdoor environment, and specifically the extent to which the teachers' own experiences of outdoors influences their professed behaviours in their role when working outside with children. At the heart of this discussion is the concern that only those teachers who have had good experiences of outdoor play themselves may go on to provide good outdoor experiences for young children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a review of research focusing on 'Learning Outside the Classroom' (LOtC). We provide a distillation of international research in this field that identifies how future investigations could be focused and move the discipline forward. As a consequence of the breadth of our study, we feel our findings will have applications in educational settings across the globe. What we discover is a significant bias towards types of learning that largely cannot be measured, and that only a minority of published research in our review pays the level of attention to theoretical and philosophical foundations found in most other educational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on new materialisms to highlight children's sensitivity to the agency of nonhuman materials. Working with data fragments from an ongoing project investigating children's relationship with their outdoor environments, the article uses the figure of murmuration in a diffractive analysis approach to reveal materialdiscursive intra-actions. In doing so, the article highlights an ingrained tendency to focus on the human whilst overlooking the material. Attentiveness to the agency of all matter, human and nonhuman, has significant implications for early childhood geographies, research and pedagogy as it shines a light on the intra-active nature of the world. This offers new possibilities but also calls attention to the relations of responsibilities inherent in a world where all matter is vibrant and agential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New playground concepts – favouring natural play characteristics – emerge. The aim of our free play study is to explore the relation between newly established natural playgrounds and the widely spread contemporary ones in terms of physical activity levels. The playground features differ in vegetation, topography, size and play equipment. The children’s locomotive activity was measured with the StepWatch™ Activity Monitor – a pedometer. Research with known groups of preschool children on urban playgrounds should serve a future transfer of results to institutional play areas. Within this pilot study, results indicate that there is no significant difference in mean locomotive activity during free play on diverse playgrounds. However, results show high variability of activity between the playgrounds in terms of active children and rather sedentary ones. In conclusion, kindergarten environments should be more diverse incorporating elements of nature and contemporary playgrounds to serve all levels of activity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Large crowds in parks can be a problem for park managers and visitors. However, perceptions of crowding are difficult to measure due to coping mechanisms deployed by park visitors. Furthermore, perceptions of crowding should not be measured in isolation, but rather as part of a suite of conditions that comprise the visitors' outdoor experience. We used a dichotomous choice experiment with visual images and eight attributes to estimate park users' utilities associated with their visitor experience in Garibaldi Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada. Our visual method allowed us to control for background view and compare user preferences on hiking trails with preferences at final destinations. We find that utilities are more sensitive to crowding at viewpoints than to other aspects of the outdoor experience. Thus, visitor satisfaction and crowding perceptions are more likely to be defined by where visitors have these encounters rather than the total number of encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike most developed countries, until now no time-use microenvironment studies have been undertaken in New Zealand. International studies show that on average 60%–70% of each day is spent at home indoors in all countries. Time-use differences usually relate to day type, season, gender, age and job type. Although house indoor environments have fewer pollutants than other microenvironments, spending much time in this one microenvironment can easily lead to greater exposure while some indoor spaces like kitchens are proven to produce higher levels of pollutants compared to other rooms. Consequently, this study undertaken in summer has focused on time-use in three microenvironments: house indoors; house outdoors; and out of home, with a more detailed look at the time different members of selected household types spend in the various rooms of their house. Results show that New Zealanders spend on average 69.7% of each day at home indoors. Like other countries, time-use at home indoors in New Zealand is affected by gender, age, job type and day type (weekday or weekend). The average summer time-use at home outdoors is only 0.55 hours/day which is very little for a country with a temperate climate and a large proportion of houses with private gardens. In fact, New Zealand time-use microenvironment patterns seem to follow similar patterns to those of most developed countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some ways, critical conversations on black performance studies focus the first part ofScenesin its particular engagement with black fungibility. Arguably, the first half is black performance studies’ founding text. Even still, the authors argue that black performance studies is never not a question of ecological possibility, of being black outside in the wake of self-possession’s overdetermined white particularity. Such questions foregroundScenes’second half. Just as Hartman elucidates how the “nonevent of emancipation insinuated by the perpetuation of the plantation system” bespeaks the state’s anti-black insistence on keeping blackness outside and in the field, the authors argue for the field’s persistence and just as well as for the question of what’s out from the field. It is in that spirit that the authors argue for the centrality ofScenes’ second half for black performance studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Children’s well-being is linked to a complex web of factors including the child’s personality, inherent protective mechanisms, family relationships, social capital, and economic status. Young carers are particularly at risk from poor mental health outcomes and low well-being. In this study the impact of immersive activities in nature on the well-being of 8 young carers (3 girls and 5 boys; aged 9–13 years) was explored. The immersive woodland activities included practical skills such as fire making, cooking, and using tools as well as team building and activities to help build trust. A mixed method, pre-test/post-test approach was undertaken using Emotional Literacy Checklists and interviews, poems and discussion. There were measurable improvements—specifically in motivation and self-awareness—in the young carers’ emotional literacy as reported by the parents and teachers. The well-being indicators that were referenced most frequently by parents and teachers related to the children’s social relationships and their development as individuals. The children reported changes related to social, physical, and “natural connection” well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that outdoor leader education and training is characterized by the development of procedural skills at the expense of crucial but usually ignored non-technical skills (e.g. contextualized decision-making and reflection). This risks producing practitioners with a potentially unsophisticated awareness of the holistic outdoor environment impeding the development of links between theory and practice. This paper analyses the application of critical incident theory to a study of undergraduates in a UK outdoor leadership degree programme in order to examine the processes of developing non-technical reflective skills in the students. The study examines a range of critical incidents in a purposive homogeneous sample of students who were asked to identify and reflect on critical incidents in practice settings of their own choice. These settings spanned from the United Kingdom to remote locations overseas. Qualitative data analysis was carried out using interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings indicated that outdoor leadership programmes need to develop a broader and holistic skills base rather than concentrate on primarily physical and technical skills. A focus on the critical incident method early in education has the potential to equip practitioners with the holistic and complex set of skills required in the contemporary outdoor workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Forest School approach to Early Years education, originally developed in Scandinavia, is influencing learning outside the classroom in England. An inner city primary school in Yorkshire investigated the nature and purpose of Forest Schools in Denmark, through a study visit, prior to developing their own Forest School in the midst of an urban landscape. The views of staff and parents were sought and findings suggest that the ethos and intention of Forest School were positively welcomed. The results demonstrate the need to create further opportunities for teachers, children and parents to be involved in Forest school activities together. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research was undertaken by the author in order to describe, interpret and explain what happens when counsellors and psychotherapists who have been trained to work indoors with their therapy clients take their therapy practice into outdoor natural spaces. A central research question addressed 'What happens when counsellors and psychotherapists, who have been trained to work indoors with their therapy clients, take their therapy practice in to outdoor natural spaces?' Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with therapists who practised outdoors. Three dominant themes emerged critiquing aspects of current counselling and psychotherapy practice. These were related to the unfolding ecological crisis, the context of the work and moving beyond current conceptions of distress and the role of therapy in addressing this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk is used to deny disabled people access to many parts of mainstream life. Using qualitative data we explore disabled people’s views and experiences of outdoor recreation, bringing together ideas from two areas of sociology – disability studies and risk using the concepts of edgework and psycho-emotional disablism. Many people felt that the outdoors represented a risky environment. For some, risk was one of the main drivers for going out into the countryside; whilst for others, risk was a major cause of their reluctance to venture into the countryside. Engaging in risk both can disable and can challenge disablist views. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives:The aim of this study was to describe how persons with early-stage dementia reflect on being outdoors. Method:Data were collected through repeated interviews with a purposive sample of 11 persons with early-stage dementia in Sweden during the period 2009–2010 and were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Results:Informants described being outdoors as a confirmation of the self. Confirmation of their ability to maintain desired activities, despite the dementia disease, was important to the informants. However, some confirmations were not positive; the realisation that one could no longer perform certain activities could be devastating. Two sub-themes emerged:shifting between‘still being part of it all’and a sense of grief and lossandstriving to keep on despite perceived barriers. Past, but no longer possible, outdoor activities were greatly missed and the informants longed to be able to perform these activities once again. To resolve possible difficulties associated with being outdoors, the informants used various adaptation strategies. Despite the described barriers, being outdoors was of great value to them. Conclusion:Independent outdoor activities seem to contribute to the well-being and feelings of self-worth among persons with early-stage dementia who want to be and are able to be outdoors. If a person with dementia, despite cognitive limitations, wants and is able to engage in outdoor activities, it is important for relatives and health-care staff to encourage and facilitate this, for example, by discussing adaptation strategies to deal with orientation problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports on a study in which eight Foundation Phase teachers were supported in exploring Reggio-inspired projects in the outdoor environments of their settings. The study found that the teachers did adopt more child-initiated/centred approaches although it is maintained that in part this was related to the outdoor context in which the explorations took place. However, supporting such approaches was not easy for the teachers while many did not make regular use of their outdoor spaces. It appeared that ‘real work’ was seen to take place within classrooms and was focused on the learning of subject content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As children and adolescents spend less time outdoors, research increasingly demonstrates that natural environments play an important role in healthy development. School counselors work to optimize student learning and psychosocial development, while serving as frontline professionals promoting mental health among youth. This literature review examines outcomes of recent research on the connection between nature, mental health, and learning in school-aged youth. It outlines opportunities for infusing nature into all aspects of the school counseling program. Two case examples illustrate how creative school counselors incorporate outdoor environments into their comprehensive school counseling programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore emerging issues in the practice of counselling and psychotherapy in the outdoors, which the authors encountered when they took their clients outside of the traditional therapy room. The outdoors is defined as natural areas and spaces, such as woods and parks which have been termed 'nearby nature' (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989) and also more remote areas such as mountains and moors which are more isolated from civilisation, what some have termed wilderness (Mcfarlane, 2007). Particular emphasis will be given to the 'frame' of psychotherapy and how aspects of this are affected by moving outdoors, in particular contracting in relation to confidentiality and timing. The relationship in psychotherapy will be explored in relation to issues of mutuality and asymmetry alongside the role of nature in the therapeutic process. Lastly the challenges and therapeutic potential of psychotherapy in nature will be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores preschool children's outdoor play preferences. The sample was 40 (20 male, 20 female) primarily European-American three and four year olds. Data were collected via naturalistic observation and analyzed using repeated measures ANOVAs and MANOVAs. The independent variable was sex of child; dependent variable was play space (riding, sandbox, slide, jungle gym, open space, castle/play house, swings). Findings revealed a significant effect of sex of child on choice of play space - boys preferred to play on the jungle gym and swings, whereas girls preferred the sandbox more than boys. These findings both support and contradict existing literature. Future research should pursue children's use of microspaces in their play environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) in outdoor settings is a growing public health concern due to recent indoor smoking bans. The objective of this study was to measure salivary cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, in subjects aged 21-30 exposed to SHS outside bars and restaurants in Athens, Georgia. Nonsmokers participated during 6-hr periods in outdoor standing or seating areas of bars and restaurants where indoor smoking was banned, as well as a control outdoor location with no smokers over six weekends during the summer and early fall of 2007. Pre- and post-exposure saliva samples (N = 25 person-days at the bar site, N = 28 person-days at the restaurant site, and N = 11 person-days at the control) were collected and analyzed for cotinine. The mean change in the response, (ln(post) - ln(pre)) salivary cotinine levels, was significantly impacted by the type of site (bar, restaurant, control) (F = 5.09; d.f. = 2, 6.7; p = 0.0455). The median percent increase in salivary cotinine from pre-test to post-test was estimated to be 162%, 102%, and 16% at the bar, restaurant, and control sites, respectively, values that were significant increases at bars (t = 4.63; d.f. = 9.24; p = 0.0011) and restaurants (t = 4.33; d.f. = 4.47; p = 0.0097) but not at the control sites. On average, these pre-test to post-test increases in salivary cotinine were significantly higher at bar sites than control sites (t = 3.05; d.f. = 9.85; p = 0.0176) and at restaurant sites compared with control sites (t = 2.35; d.f. = 5.09; p = 0.0461). Nonsmokers outside restaurants and bars in Athens, Georgia, have significantly elevated salivary cotinine levels indicative of secondhand smoke exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A qualitative case study from Brumunddalen, Norway, indicates that children's use of nature areas near their homes have changed substantially from being spontaneous and self-initiated to being part of planned, organised and adult-controlled activities. This study explores the association between changes in outdoor play and wider patterns of change in childhood today, as increasing amounts of play time is spent in institutions and organised activities, or occupied by computer and internet usage. The paper discusses these effects in terms of social relations as well as children's identity formation. The subject was investigated through adults' memories of their own childhood and their observations of children's practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]