Moving beyond a tokenistic curriculum through outdoor learning

Gordon Davis is the Head of Geography and Deputy Head of Year of an Academy in inner London.

A few years ago, my department was on a geography field trip with students from my school. We were conducting measurements of footpath erosion at Studland Bay. It was with curiosity that I posed the following questions to the group, “How many of you have seen a beach?” and, “How many of you have seen a sand dune?” Approximately half had been to a beach in their lives and a mere eight out of the eighty-four students had seen a sand dune. I was stunned into silence at the realisation that we teach and assess many students on abstract topics that are completely disconnected from their everyday experiences and realities. This highlights a significant proportion of students are at an immediate disadvantage within the current education system for not having exposure to certain experiences that many take for granted. How can we best promote inclusivity and equity in education through the learning experiences that we design for our students?

The new buzzword of the current Ofsted framework is cultural capital. Ofsted defines cultural capital as the knowledge that children need to be effective citizens. When inspecting a school environment, Ofsted wants to observe ways that a curriculum moves beyond one that is simply tokenistic that “all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils… the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life”. Cultural capital is an ambiguous and controversial concept. The term was coined by the sociologist Bourdieu. He described cultural capital as the skills, knowledge, and behaviours associated with the dominant culture. Bourdieu argued pupils from families who are more familiar with the dominant cultural codes in a society are likely to have an advantage in the education system.¹ Ofsted’s use of cultural capital has sparked a mixed response.² Rather than delve further into the complexities of this umbrella term, I will share the whole-school strategic approach I took to design a curriculum that promotes the holistic development of our students, regardless of their background and situation, through outdoor experiences.

The Power of Volunteering
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One way to design for the holistic development of all students is through promoting student voice, where the thoughts, views and opinions of students are incorporated into projects. This empowers students to take ownership of their learning and become stewards of their curriculum and school experiences. I use student voice to develop outdoor learning experiences and community engagement activities. I ensure the experiences are designed so that they are learner-centred and provide opportunities for collaborative work. I find this promotes student engagement and knowledge development. A recent project involved the students growing food in a community garden to promote healthy eating. This project created a connection to key curriculum content in geography and science. It also enabled them to develop a diverse skill set and competencies such as working collaboratively, public speaking, project management, and building positive relationships with the wider community. Student voice enables our students to no longer be ‘othered’ in curriculum design but lie at the heart of its future and be catalysts in its creation.³
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Outdoor learning initiatives have provided our students with experiences that could not be replicated in formal learning environments. We have started to implement the Duke of Edinburgh scheme and diversify volunteering opportunities. We have celebrated our successes, and this has been recognised in the media. Outdoor learning now forms a major part of our school curriculum. students get to interact with the world and develop their ability to observe the different natural and human environments they encounter. It has developed an appreciation for conservation of biodiversity.

I am experimenting with an outdoor programme designed with colleagues (which is still in its infancy) — that acts to create a holistic curriculum available to all students. This would help to establish skills of cognitive (processing information and formatting understanding) and effective communication (opinions, principles, awareness, and empathy). With these opportunities embedded in our curriculum, it can be argued that our school is focusing on more than ensuring our students achieve just five grade 9–4 GCSEs. It is also fostering the development of ‘the whole young person’.⁴

Through outdoor learning experiences, the students become equipped with invaluable skills ranging from leadership, collaboration and self-led learning. These are skills that not only benefit our students in the classroom but are easily transferable to further studies and the world of employment. Volunteering also benefits our students by making them stand out from other applicants when applying for jobs, admission to college, scholarships, apprenticeships and universities. It also supports internal schemes, such as the Jack Petchey Award or V-inspired, and our current initiatives such as the Duke of Edinburgh Award. It enables cross-curricula links and student cohesion across the school.

Examples of practice
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I have worked with a team of teachers at my school to implement a monthly volunteering programme; either through the Duke of Edinburgh volunteering arm of the award or under the idea of community stewardship. This is done in addition to providing outdoor experiences for all students including pupil premium and SEND students. Examples include trips to the Thames wetland (with Thames21) to conserve marginal habitats, litter picks in the local community and planting trees in the school ground from the Woodland Trust to promote sustainability. We have previously volunteered with students on Christmas Day delivering gifts to Ronald McDonald House hospice and King’s College London and collaborated with Thames21 to dispose of plastic in the River Thames Estuary.
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Students from my school, took part in a documentary called ‘The Living Thames’, which was co-produced by the Thames Estuary Partnership and Dorothy Leiper.⁵ Our continued efforts to volunteer and conserve the Thames and its waterways — as seen in the photo below — were recognised in the film. A promo of the film can be seen at https://vimeo.com/380990744. Students also had the honour of being involved in the documentary with Sir David Attenborough.
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The ‘Living Thames’ has won many awards since its release, including an Award of Excellence, IndieFEST Film Awards 2019.
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The volunteering experiences have raised the aspirations of our students and have enabled them to develop further careers from their experiences. The five students interviewed in the documentary are students who have now left our school but have continued a legacy of volunteering in local communities or have careers related to their experiences from the school.
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The five previous students of the school spoke about the benefits of volunteering to promote further experiences. From the left: Habeeb Lawal, Qozeem Lawal, Lateef Lawal, Shannon O’Brien and Charlotte Cunningham.
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These volunteering experiences not only nurture the holistic development of students but enable them to build a curriculum vitae that shows academic and vocational skills that benefit further employers and educational institutions. Charlotte is a classic example of how volunteering has shaped her future pathway. The number of hours she dedicated to the conservation project saw her receive the Jack Petchey Award. This led to an experience at Howletts Zoo where she was a zookeeper for a day. These micro experiences led to her studying Zoology at university. She is now studying for a Masters in Conservation, Biology and Ecology.
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How to start
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Promoting volunteering or youth social action can be implemented in a range of different contexts. It can be informal or formal activities ranging from volunteering, fundraising, campaigning or supporting peers within the school. Youth social action is seen as activities that make a positive difference to others or the environment. An example of this is through the work of one of our former students, Yetunde Kehinde, who has become a youth social activist for the charity Action for Conservation (https://www.actionforconservation.org/). The case study link to the short educational documentary guides teachers and educational practitioners to the way they can develop their own project within their schools. You can see the film and the accompanying resources I have created at: https://www.youth-social-action.careersandenterprise.co.uk/case-study-curriculum-links.⁶

The short film follows the journey of Yetunde, Michael Heath (Thames21), Laura Kravac (Action for Conservation) and myself as a leader of volunteering in school on how we have supported and nurtured volunteering and youth social action.
I advocate the following to get started:
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1. Go to the local community or contact friends groups that want to get involved with students;
2. Start small with local projects with companies that specialise in habitat management or volunteering, such as Thames21 or Friends of Footscray Meadows;
3. Find engaged staff to help pioneer the projects;
4. Enable student voice throughout to steer projects in the local community;
5. Reward and recognise the efforts of the students through social media and external agencies, such as awards from Jack Petchey or V-inspired;
6. Be a reference when students apply for college, university or employment.
   

These small steps and resources can give schools a head start in planning youth social action projects, whatever the setting.

Final thoughts

I am not claiming that this is the only way to promote a curriculum that supports the holistic development of students from all backgrounds. Serious changes are required at all levels to improve inclusivity and equity in education. Here, I am suggesting how micro changes can be made at the school level to make learning more inclusive and equitable for students from diverse backgrounds. Our school has developed a curriculum for our students that appreciates that outdoor environments can provide invaluable learning experiences that formal environments cannot achieve alone. Volunteering or ‘youth social action’ is about empowering the students to take ownership of their school experience and develop key life skills. Student-led outdoor learning experiences can play a key role in moving from a tokenistic curriculum, to one that contains creativity and intellectual appeal for all students, irrespective of social, economic or cultural background.⁷
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Gordon Davis

Further reading
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1. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. C. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education. New York: Greenwood Press.
2. Mansell, W. (2019) Ofsted plan to inspect ‘cultural capital’ in schools attacked as elitist. [Accessed 20 February 2020] from: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/03/ofsted-plan-inspect-cultural-capital-schools-attacked-as-elitist
3. Hopwood, N. (2011) ‘Young people’s conceptions of geography and education’, in G. Butt (ed) Geography, Education and the Future, London: Continuum, pp. 30–43.
4. Malone, K. (2008) Every experience matters: an evidence based research report on the role of learning outside the classroom for children’s whole development from birth to eighteen years: Commissioned Report, Wollongong, Australia: Farming and Countryside Education for UK Department Children, School and Families (FACE).
5. The Living Thames. (2019). [Online]. Directed by Dorothy Leiper. England: Thames Estuary Partnership [Viewed 14 May 2019]. Available from Vimeo.com.
6. Yetunde’s Youth Social Action. (2019). [Online]. Directed by Dorothy Leiper. England: Thames Estuary Partnership [Viewed 14 May 2019]. Available from Vimeo.com.
7. Kitchen, R. (2013). ‘Student perceptions of geographical knowledge and the role of the teacher’, in Geography, 98(3), pp. 112–122.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organisation, employer or company.