Anticipated Bias in Education Outside the Classroom Research – do we promote representative participation?

In this presentation, teachers’ voluntary participation in research and bias in recruitment are discussed on the basis of current quantitative research.
Critique has been raised that the field of research on school based outdoor learning studies are positively biased. Research has mainly been carried out among teachers and schools being positive about Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) and maybe also carried out by researchers who are often outdoorsy themselves, which can support this critique (Bentsen et al., 2009). Although a few publications problematize parts of the research, prevailing results are positive towards outdoor learning. Also, informants not positive towards outdoor learning can be reluctant to volunteer for research. This situation can make it difficult to obtain a comprehensive description of the situation of Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) in Schools. In this presentation, the use of control questions and conservative estimations in qualitative surveys on the prevalence of EOtC are discussed. In a recent enumeration of Danish Schools practicing “Udeskole” (Barfod & Bølling et al., 2021), the use of different methods for collecting data (e-mail survey and telephone calls) provided different and noteworthy results.