Capacity Material

Supporting Social Emotional Learning in Outdoor Science

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is an important and growing field within education. Researchers and practitioners have found that SEL is an essential part of supporting young people to thrive—in and out of the classroom. SEL helps build students’ social skills, emotional awareness, and resilience. Developing social and emotional competence can offer students more ease in their interpersonal interactions, a positive sense of identity, increased agency to call on their strengths, the ability to pursue continued growth, and improved learning. All these competencies make students better learners, supporting them to tackle complex tasks and to show up as engaged members of their communities outside of school. Developing students’ SEL competencies is also shown to increase their academic performance and chance of employment, while reducing emotional and behavioral challenges.

This concept paper is the result of a collaboration between the BEETLES Project and the Grow Outside Toolkit [http://grow-outside.org/]. BEETLES infuses outdoor science programs with research-based approaches and tools to improve science teaching and learning. Grow Outside, convened by NatureBridge and funded by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, brought BEETLES together with 11 Residential Environmental Learning Centers to explore how to maximize the opportunity for SEL in the outdoors. This paper is one of the many resources that resulted. To see others, please visit [http://grow-outside.org/].

Leading organizations and research coalitions advocate for an integrated approach to SEL where students practice SEL skills as they participate in academic learning, and where SEL is integrated across all aspects of students’ educational experience. This is in contrast to SEL being taught as a stand-alone set of skills, only applied within nonacademic school activities, or framed as separate from the rest of students’ education. T his integrated or embedded approach grounds SEL within a real-world context. Daily life doesn’t offer blocks of time that are deemed social and emotional and others that are not social and emotional. Emotional responses to events and external stimuli are continuous and often subconscious. Students don’t check their emotions at the door when they start science class, play on a sports team, or finish an activity focused on developing their social skills. Social interactions are an integral part of family relationships, attending school, navigating connections with peers, and making new acquaintances.

Outdoor learning offers a unique opportunity for developing SEL in a rich and complex setting. Environmental education and outdoor science organizations, especially those providing longer and overnight experiences, can play a unique and emphatic role in supporting students’ social and emotional development. Environmental and outdoor science organizations can increase their impact by integrating intentional and consistent opportunities for students to practice SEL across all aspects of their programs.

This paper focuses specifically on how using student-centered and nature-centered teaching approaches in outdoor science and environmental education programs can consistently integrate opportunities for the development of SEL competencies. This paper will not offer a complete literature review of SEL, a complete guide to implementing SEL, or a full picture of all the SEL opportunities within outdoor science and environmental education. We recommend looking to the work of the following stellar organizations and reports for more on implementing SEL in classrooms and beyond:
– Turnaround for Children: https://www.turnaroundusa.org/
– The ASPEN Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, & Academic Development: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/national-commission-on-social-emotional-and-academic-development/
– Science of Learning & Development Alliance: https://www.soldalliance.org/
– American Institutes for Research: https://www.air.org/topic/social-and-emotional-learning
– Learning Policy Institute: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/social-and-emotional-learning-case-study-san-jose-state-report
– TransformEd: https://www.transformingeducation.org/ (BROKEN LINK)