Developing a creative curriculum with Learning Outside the Classroom at its heart

This piece was originally published on the Learning Outside the Classroom (LOtC) website.

This blog post was written to explore what it means to place Learning Outside the Classroom (LOtC) at the centre of curriculum thinking, rather than at its margins. It reflects on the ways in which outdoor learning can act not as a supplement to existing practice, but as an organising principle for designing experience-rich and inclusive curricula that attend to how children encounter meaning, not only what they can repeat.

Drawing on my work in primary education, the post considers how creative curriculum design that embraces LOtC opens up space for deeper engagement, risk-taking, and holistic development — not just in discrete “outdoor” moments, but as a continuous thread woven through classroom practice. In doing so, it highlights connections between pedagogy, place, and the conditions under which learners feel confident to explore, wonder, and participate.

Revisiting this piece, I see clear links with ongoing research on low-stakes, high-interest learning, phenomenological approaches to educational experience, and the role that space — whether inside or outside — plays in shaping how children make sense of mathematics and other curriculum domains.

→ Read the full post on the LOtC website:
Developing a creative curriculum with Learning Outside the Classroom at its heart