A comparative study of the impacts and students’ perceptions of indoor and outdoor learning in the science classroom

At present, best teaching and learning approaches in different learning settings are overrated. The evolving pace of this multifaceted world has triggered the growing number of such demands in promoting the development of children’s wellbeing especially in learning science (Prensky, 2005; Hofstein and Rosenfeld, 1996; Abell and Lederman, 2007). Hence, this research study was carried out to examine and evaluate the impacts and students’ perceptions of indoor and outdoor learning in understanding science. Along these lines, this action research study was planned ‘to explore students’ experience and perceptions after outdoor teaching had been a regular practice for a substantial period of time’ in relevance to the context of the current school setting involved in this research. Likewise, this research study is momentous in contributing new ideas and main findings to the emergent body of knowledge relating to the practice of both indoor and outdoor learning in schools.

The accumulated findings of this research study have established three main points that can be beneficial for further investigation. Firstly, both indoor and outdoor learning complements each other to improve students’ academic performance in science. This has been tested and analysed by using the Wilcoxon test. Secondly, outdoor learning provides more effective and influential impacts on students’ academic performance in understanding science despite the small number of students who maintained their marks in their quiz tests after experiencing both indoor and outdoor learning. Thirdly, students are more zealous to participate in the outdoors than staying indoors as they are provided with wide-ranging opportunities to observe, explore and make connection of their science learning through sensory learning experiences in the outdoors even though there are some minor percentages of students that prefer indoor learning or both types of learning.

After a thorough data analysis, the researchers would like to make several recommendations for further research. An area for further research is to explore how different multiple intelligences would affect the choice and perceptions of students to learn indoors or outdoors. Another area for research is to investigate the effectiveness of learning science through the indoors and outdoors in enhancing students’ communication skills. Finally, another point for further research is to investigate the impact of indoor classroom provision like manipulative, tools and materials to carry out experiments, and other resources in building up students’ scientific skills.