Writing in nature-based settings: participant experiences in a literacy and leadership development program

Place-based education has long been relevant in literacy teaching and learning, and practitioners and scholars across the English studies use places to create meaningful and relevant pedagogies. Operating assumptions for how and why place impacts student writing often remain under examined, and this is especially true of particular settings, such as nature-based outdoor settings. This study examines a diverse group of high school writers’ experience of writing outside. Participants were adolescents in a 28- or 40-day voluntary literacy and outdoor adventure learning program. This program, Adventure Risk Challenge, serves primarily rural students who use English as a second or other language and provides a literacy-rich curriculum with instruction in language, reading, public speaking, and especially writing. The learning settings are at outdoor basecamps and on backcountry, wilderness expeditions. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, data was collected through methods of participant observation during a summer program and in 21 semi-structured interviews of program alumni and instructors. Interview transcripts were analyzed and interpreted through multiple cycles of coding. The findings suggest that students’ experience of writing outdoors is beneficial for at least three reasons: (1) positive social environments, (2) greater facility in generating ideas and descriptive details, and (3) enhanced concentration while engaged in writing tasks. Additional lines of inquiry and applications to school learning environments are discussed.