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This paper examines the potential of outdoor learning for supporting children's understanding of and attitude towards history. A class of primary school children participated in an intensive experiential, residential history programme. A range of data were collected before, during and after the residential programme, and the findings suggest that the experience had a positive impact on the children's attitude towards history, and enabled many of the children to be able to recall easily highly specific factual knowledge. However the children's understanding of history as a provisional construct was not developed, as it was not a strong feature of the programme. Nor was the experiential nature of the experience fully exploited. Overall the study suggests that such a programme has the potential to support children's learning of the past, but a deeper understanding of history, drawing on the benefits of outdoor learning pedagogy needs to be planned for more explicitly.

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.

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