The Forest School (FS) approach emphasises learner-centredness, play-based learning and long-term and repeated experiences, set within a woodland context. Adults facilitate, rather than direct, learner experiences (FSA, 2012). This democratic form of learning (Cree, 2009) may foreground a tension for practitioners between being the ‘more expert other’, scaffolding skills and understanding, and unconsciously steering learners towards adult-determined outcomes (Martin-Millward, 2020). This blog post will explore how the facilitator identity of the Forest School leaders (FSLs) can both help and hinder child agency within the approach in England.
The social-constructivist approach of FS (Knight, 2018) provides a foundation for leaders to reflect on their role as a facilitator of children’s learning. ‘Facilitation’ here means to enable guided participation and scaffold children’s learning experiences. The initial sessions of any FS programme can be highly adult-directed to aid children’s transition into the new environment and pedagogical style (Coats & Pimlott-Wilson, 2019). This introduces children to new ideas that they can appropriate and develop. The early strong steer from adults should wane, enabling the learner more control to direct their own learning experiences. This poses a dilemma for FSLs as it threatens their identity as the outdoor educational professional.
Outcome-driven agendas underpinning English education can increase external pressures for FSLs to demonstrate progression in learners’ knowledge and skills, in order to justify the time that can be misconceived as ‘just playing in the woods’. This pressure may be overt or unconscious, manifested through FSLs’ use of questioning to elicit concrete information, rather than exploring learners’ ideas and co-constructing knowledge in reciprocal dialogue with learners (Martin-Millward, 2020). Acknowledging the role of FSL as ‘more expert other’ may highlight pressure on adults to respond accurately to children’s queries, thus leading learners towards a passive recipient, rather than active enquirer, role (Martin-Millward, 2020). This can create a rigid enactment of FS where the adult determines what is right and wrong, standardising as a result what should be a unique, individualised FS experience.
