The Impact of Forest School on Education for Sustainable Development in the Early Years in England

Forest School in the UK

Forest School was developed in the UK in the mid-1990s as a response to observed practice in Denmark by a group of early years tutors and trainees on a field trip from Bridgwater College in Somerset. However, Forest School in the UK is not the same as the practice observed in Denmark. Practitioners who visit Denmark expecting to see exactly [Page 2]the same way of working with young children outside as happens in Forest School in the UK may be confused. Danish preschools will often have opportunities for wilder outdoor experiences, but they are predicated on different cultural and educational expectations, expectations that are closer to those in the other Scandinavian countries, which all share a historical-cultural concept that was called ‘Friluftsliv’ by the playwright Henrik Ibsen in 1859 (Dahle, 2003). Forest School in the UK is also used by groups other than preschool children, a phenomenon you are unlikely to see in other countries as yet.

‘Friluftsliv’ expresses the idea that the citizens of Scandinavian countries will wish naturally to connect with their environment in many different ways and as often as possible. When I lived in Norway in the 1970s, it was usual for families to go out at the weekends to walk or ski, light a fire to make a hot drink, collect berries in their season, hunt, fish and generally be in tune with their surroundings. Babies in backpacks or towed in pulks (like a cradle on skis; for an example, see http://www.orscrosscountryskisdirect.com/kindershuttle-ski-pulk.html) and older people in their eighties all participated. At the school where I taught, Wednesday afternoon was given over to taught outdoor activities. I visited the University of Umeå in Sweden in 2008 and observed trainee teachers being taught how to teach these activities, which included how to dig a snow hole to keep the children safe if stranded outdoors.

I include this description to highlight the difference between the cultural backgrounds of Scandinavia and the UK. In the more rural parts of the UK, there may be communities who still maintain this level of engagement with the world outside their door, just as inner-city life in Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen may preclude it, but the underlying assumptions hold good. Where Friluftsliv is an assumed norm, it is not necessary to define the taxonomy of Forest School, and to analyse what makes it successful and worthwhile. It may be that increasing urbanisation will erode the quality of outdoor experiences in some areas of Scandinavia, and in that case they may look at what we are doing and invent something similar. But it will not be the same, as it will be predicated on different cultural and educational expectations. While space is available for the majority of citizens, it will hopefully remain an expectation that young children at least will be outside for long periods of time interacting with wild spaces.

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