Contribution short abstract

Outdoor learning and collective narrative practices help students face ecological disruption by connecting deep-time awareness, shared stories and attentive presence, fostering grounded hope and reflective, future-oriented learning.

Contribution long abstract

Together, outdoor learning and narrative co-construction offer pathways toward a pedagogy of hope— a learning process that allows students to cultivate hope, justice and systemic awareness in disrupted times (Bohlayer, 2023; Dodd et al., 2022; Hägg et al., 2021). Following David Denborough’s work on collective narrative practice, the use of narrative frescoes enables students to assemble fragments of experience, concern and imagination into shared stories that help them make meaning in the midst of ecological and social upheaval.

Meanwhile, an adapted version of Stephan Harding's Deep Time Walk invites learners to discover the planet's long history, recognising the creativity of the living and non-living world as a source of teaching in itself. Walking becomes a form of inquiry grounded in the rhythms, textures and temporalities of the more-than-human. The approach is supported and enriched by insights from Lesley Roberts’s coaching outdoor, which helps shape conditions for attentiveness, sensory presence, and reflective dialogue.

In outdoor settings and through shared narrative work, learners come to perceive that the systems unravelling today are part of much larger temporal movements—some destructive, others regenerative. This awareness strengthens their capacity to witness damage lucidly while recognising that change unfolds across multiple timescales. Such a relational understanding of time deepens the kind of reflective, grounded hope that neither denies suffering nor idealises the future, but emerges from seeing oneself as part of continuum of life, struggle and renewal. In this way, outdoor learning and collective narrative foster learning that remain open, critical and future oriented.