Research on outdoor classrooms design in school gardens

Abstract

Outdoor classrooms, one of the oldest educational approaches that have existed, bringing learning through the common denominator with nature to the agenda, first emerged in England as a reform movement in education at the end of the 1950s. Outdoor classrooms are a rare educational structure that allows students to interact with nature and experience the opportunities of this interaction with their fully digitalised interaction potentials. In the study, examples of open-air classrooms, which are almost non-existent in Türkiye, have been analysed with inductive content analysis by understanding them with the semi-structured interview technique conducted with architects and landscape architects who are teachers and practitioners. In the end, considering all the evaluations, it was determined that the effects of outdoor classes on students were grouped into four categories: effects on cognitive, psychomotor, development, affective, and social development. Beyond only using a theoretical approach, exemplary outdoor classroom models were developed and interpreted.