an initiative to provide residential fieldwork to 11-14 year-olds from across the
socio-economic spectrum.
The 2004 London Challenge Residential Initiative
The 2004 London Challenge Residential Initiative offered 51 schools from the
London boroughs of Hackney, Haringey, Islington, Lambeth and Southwark
the opportunity to take a group of Key Stage 3 students (11-14 year-olds)
away on a fully-funded residential course at a designated rural field study
centre in the UK or Eire. The Field Studies Council (FSC) had developed a
wide range of curriculum-linked (science, geography, PE) and eco-adventure
courses after extensive consultation with schools (FSC, 2004a; 2004b) and
with the backing of London Challenge (the Excellence in the Cities coordinator
for the Department of Education and Science (DfES)).
We were commissioned to evaluate the initiative and in our evaluation we
used a framework of questions that derived from Rickinson et al. (2004) who
proposed four possible areas of impact that outdoor learning might have:
c cognitive impacts - concerning knowledge, understanding and other
academic outcomes
• affective impacts - encompassing attitudes, values, beliefs and self-
perceptions
• interpersonal / social impacts - including communication skills,
leadership and teamwork
• physical / behavioural impacts - relating to physical fitness, physical
skills, personal behaviours and social actions.
The meta-analysis of Rickinson et al. (2004) also concluded that there is a
lack of UK-based research into: young people’s fears and concerns about
outdoor education, teachers’ aims for, and students’ experiences of, outdoor
learning in all its kinds, teachers’ and educators’ conceptions of the ‘outdoor
classroom’ and science-based fieldwork particularly at secondary school level.