Outdoor education or outdoor learning, as distinct from concepts such as extracurricular learning or adventure education, refers to teaching that takes place outdoor. Pioneers in this field are, for example, Denmark and Sweden, as well as Scotland and New Zealand (von Au & Gade, 2016). However, outdoor education is also gaining ground in Switzerland, to which a recent campaign by WWF Switzerland has contributed by promoting outdoor teaching. Many advantages are attributed to outdoor education, such as being able to look at or investigate something directly rather than studying it in a more abstract way in a book. According to the evaluation of the WWF campaign, outdoor lessons are fun for teachers and students and learning goals are achieved to a great extent also through outdoor teaching (Müller-Kuhn & Häbig, 2022). This contribution deals with a by-product of the evaluation of the WWF project: In the interviews with students from four schools and teachers from 24 schools, which were analyzed by qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2014), as well as in the ethnographic observations (Reh, 2012) of the outdoor lessons of four classes, it becomes apparent that teaching in nature seems to be a setting that promotes student participation: Initial analyses show that outdoor lessons give students much more freedom to move and behave autonomously but also to participate more in shaping the lessons: If the students discover something unknown outside, and they ask the teacher about it, the teacher usually addresses the matter: The teacher takes up the students' questions and integrates them into the lesson. In this way, teachers continuously adapt their lessons according to the students' impulses. The students can also make more decisions for themselves outside than in the classroom. On the one hand, the reason seems to be that they are less in the direct field of vision of the teacher as they are in the classroom. On the other hand, the teaching style outside seems to be less teacher-centered and therefore gives the students more freedom: The outdoor methods include playful discovery with all senses and creative implementations. The findings on participation in the outdoor classroom setting raise the question of whether such participatory, collaborative teaching is also possible in the classroom. What is it that makes outdoor education seem to offer more room for participation than regular indoor education? What lessons can be learned from outdoor education for everyday school life?

Kuckartz, U. (2014). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung (2., durchges. Aufl.). Beltz Juventa. Müller-Kuhn, D., & Häbig, J. (2022): Begleitevaluation der WWF-Aktionswochen «Ab in die Natur – draussen unterrichten» von 2018 bis 2021. Abschlussbericht. Zürich: Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5907210. Reh, S. (2012). Beobachtungen aufschreiben. Zwischen Beobachtungen, Notizen und „Re-writing“. In H. de Boer & S. Reh (Hrsg.), Beobachtung in der Schule – Beobachten lernen (S. 115–129). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18938-3_6 von Au, J., & Gade, U. (2016). „Raus aus dem Klassenzimmer“: Outdoor Education als Unterrichtskonzept. Beltz Juventa. https://content-select.com/media/moz_viewer/56cc0a30-8f84-4244-96a9-5eeeb0dd2d03/language:de