The science behind outdoor play: Part 1

‘There is evidence that being outdoors in nature has multiple benefits for children’s development, but this research hasn’t yet influenced policy and practice in a widespread way.’

The power of the outdoors: Where it all began

I spent many years teaching in primary schools in London and almost all of that time was spent indoors. It never seemed natural to me that we keep young children cooped up inside for most of their waking hours. None of us are designed to sit down all day. Our brains and bodies evolved outdoors in nature.
When I had my own children, I noticed that things were always so much easier when we got outside. Outdoors there are fewer rules! Throwing things, being loud, moving fast – it’s all acceptable outside! We also all seemed much more self-regulated when we were outside, if someone was in a bad mood, feeling full of energy and bouncing off the walls, or feeling really lethargic – we’d head out for a walk in the forest. Being outdoors seemed to counteract whatever issues there were and help us all find the right balance in terms of our moods and levels of stimulation.

Meanwhile, at work, I was shocked to find out that a lot of the children I taught had never been in a forest despite living only a few miles from one. Many of them didn’t know their local parks either. I started to adjust the curriculum to include topics on forests, the local area and the environment, and more opportunities for children to be outdoors. I looked for research on the impact of outdoor time to support what I was doing, and found hundreds of papers on the wide range of benefits of being outside. I soon found evidence that outdoor time helped with pretty much everything – physical development, mood, sleep, health and immunity, memory, attention, behaviour, school performance, self-esteem, social skills, stress and even eyesight!

What’s the evidence that being outdoors matters?

One research study showed that the more time children spend outdoors at preschool, the better their attention is as they get older. Children who spent more time playing outside were less likely to show signs of decreased attention and increased hyperactivity, even years later (Ulset et al, 2017)! Others have demonstrated that after children have been playing or learning outdoors, they are more on-task and less disruptive in subsequent indoor lessons (Lundy and Smith, 2020; Kuo et al, 2018).

A huge body of research (Zhao et al, 2022; Yao et al, 2021, Tillmann et al, 2018) has also proven that being outside in nature reduces stress; people’s heart rate, blood pressure and levels of stress hormones are lower when they’re in natural environments. Nature contact seems to be especially supportive for more disadvantaged children; those living with high levels of stress and those with existing behavioural or attention problems, as well as children from poorer families. This means that outdoor time could actually help narrow the disadvantage gap.

The problem is that children from lower socio-economic households are less likely to access nature outside of school, which is why providing outdoor time during the nursery or school day is so important to ensure equality of access.

Why is research on the outdoors not influencing policy and practice?

The more I read about how beneficial being outdoors was, the more frustrated I felt that the education system in England isn’t set up to reap these benefits. Why do we spend so much time inside at school and in childcare settings?

I realised that a lot of the research out there isn’t well known by parents and educators. It’s usually published in scientific journals which I didn’t even know existed when I was a teacher. The journals can be difficult (and often expensive) to access and they’re often dense and over-complicated to read. I decided to set up an Instagram account @phd_and_three to summarise and share the research I learnt about throughout my PhD journey, making sure it was quick and easy for parents and educators to access without costing them any money.

I also noticed that existing research hasn’t yet influenced policy and practice in England and I suspected it’s because a lot of the studies are small scale and use things like questionnaires and teacher observations to measure the impact of being outside, which some people think are too subjective and not scientific enough to be reliable. When large decisions are being made, and money invested, people often want larger volumes of quantitative data to base their decisions on.

It’s also really difficult to disentangle the specific impact of being outdoors because in schools and early years settings there is so much else going on, and so many different variables. For example, one school where children do a lot of outdoor learning might have better academic outcomes than a school that doesn’t spend as much time outside – but how can we know this difference is definitely because of the benefits of being outdoors? Perhaps the children at one school had higher starting points to begin with, perhaps the teachers at one school were more effective, or perhaps one school was in a more affluent area or had another initiative or pedagogy which was responsible for their success?

Starting my own research on being outdoors

I decided to start a PhD and do my own research project on how being outdoors affects children’s stress, attention and self-regulated behaviour.

The plan was to use more objective, scientific measures and equipment than that are used in a lot of current research, in order to provide evidence that policymakers might find convincing enough to change practice.

I hoped to prove that spending more time outdoors was beneficial for a range of outcomes, and that this might lead to more funding for outdoor areas in schools and nurseries, more training on outdoor play and learning, and a rethink of the idea that “proper learning” happens predominantly indoors.

This research would take place in EYFS classrooms in Newham, a deprived area of East London. I wanted to see whether being outdoors could potentially narrow the disadvantage gap, and whether the benefits of outdoor learning could be found even in urban areas where nature contact is limited. Using specially designed equipment, incorporating a microphone, actigraph (to measure movement) and a heart rate monitor, as well as head mounted cameras, I set about to use these wearable devices in order to gain new insights into how children experience indoor and outdoor environments. The children would wear these for 8 indoor and 8 outdoor sessions with their usual teacher: a 5-10 minute whole-class story time or maths session, followed by 30 minutes of free-flow choosing time. The activities they did and the resources they used would be kept the same, and the only thing that would be different is whether they were inside or outdoors.

Little did I know, how complex, fascinating and challenging the research would become!…

Coming in the next articles of this series:

– How children and teachers reacted to the research project
– Challenges that were overcome
– Results that were found