INQUIRY BASED SCIENCE AND MATHEMATIC TEACHING OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM, PUPILS CHOICES AND LEARNING OPTIONS

One fifth of all Danish schools have one or more classes being taught curriculum based outdoors regularly, e.g. one day every week or every second week. This concept is known in the Scandinavian countries as udeskole (DK) and uteskole (N). Teaching outdoors has been showed to impact pupils learning, motivation and subject related knowledge and is being discussed as pupil activating, problem oriented and child centred. In this study, the occurrence of inquiry based teaching in science and mathematics in udeskole, is assessed. To analyse practice, we extended the notion of inquiry based education, i.e. IBSME, by broadening the concept of inquiry, in order to include a more non-linear teaching approach. Using this idea, we studied how five experienced teachers practiced mathematics and science teaching in Danish udeskole at lower secondary level. Our analysis of 28 observation days and 5 interviews indicates, that udeskole has the potential to support an explorative inquiry-based teaching in a broad sense in mathematics and science. Furthermore, out studies point towards that some outdoor mathematics and science teaching practice seems to emphasise pupils choice, and by this could have the potential to strengthen pupils diverse approach to inquiry