Education outside the classroom as upstream school health promotion: ‘adding-in’ physical activity into children’s everyday life and settings

Abstract

Introduction: It is central for public health to answer questions related to how to change health and wellbeing in populations through interdisciplinarity and health in all policies and sectors. For a school physical activity promotion initiative to be acceptable and thus feasible, the buy-in of teachers is fundamental. Therefore, school physical activity promotion should be integrated into and support teaching activities. Aims: We discuss the use of education outside the classroom as a feasible pedagogical approach that integrates and promotes physical activity for school children. Methods: We present and discuss theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to argue and illustrate that education outside the classroom is a promising approach for promoting physical activity. Results: Education outside the classroom is characterised by regular curriculum-based experiential teaching activities outside the classroom with the inclusion of physical activity as a means to pedagogical ends. School subjects are taught outside the classroom drawing on problem-based learning and experiential education. Here, physical activity is integrated without compromising curriculum goals which increases teacher buy-in and thereby intervention acceptability and feasibility. Empirical evidence suggests that education outside the classroom increases boys’ moderate to vigorous physical activity and girls’ light intensity physical activity. We contend that the mechanisms are a mix of place, pedagogy and pupil motivations. Conclusions: Education outside the classroom is a feasible and acceptable approach to public health and physical activity promotion because it is integrated into children’s everyday settings through curriculum time and applied broadly to child populations at a low cost. The practice of education outside the classroom is context-dependent and culturally bound, and practices therefore need to be adapted to the individual sociocultural context.

The Association between Education Outside the Classroom and Physical Activity: Differences Attributable to the Type of Space?

“…Also, boys have a higher level of physical activity compared with girls, and we can speculate whether pupils from different sex-dependent age groups react differently to the movement afforded during EOtC. EOtC might be planned differently by teachers across grade levels and in respect to the scope of the lesson, unintentionally providing different movement options [13], e.g., play and games with younger pupils.…”

“…Above all, the benefit of EOtC must be seen in the scope of its add-in nature to promote PA and health. EOtC does not compromise the so-called core business of schools-academic learning and well-beingand is in line with general pedagogical and didactical purposes [13] compared to explicit movement integration strategies in lessons or school time [9].…”

“…Much of the difference between school day settings, and especially between the different environments used for EOtC, explain the diversity in PA. In addition to the teachers' EOtC teaching experience [13], their motivation to use EOtC across each involved class could also affect the pupils' motivation for the activities and how physically active they are [56]. The teacher's intention with the specific lessons may also affect options for the pupils being physical active.…”

“…However, such extracurricular approaches require additional resources and may be perceived as being outside the primary goals and concerns of teachers [11]. By contrast, movement implicitly integrated with primary pedagogical and didactical purposes, i.e., an add-in approach, might yield more acceptance with teachers and therefore increase the implementation potential [12,13].…”

Jak učitelé využívají venkovní prostředí pro výuku vzdělávací oblasti Člověk a jeho svět

“…Proto i v této studii ji budeme nazývat především výukou ve venkovním prostředí. Ve světě je tato výuka známá pod pojmem "education outside the classroom" (Bentsen et al, 2021;Waite, 2020).…”