Nature as a Classroom: Outdoor Learning and Adventure Education in Tenerife 

More and more learning takes place in front of a screen and between four walls. Outdoor education proposes a different route. When a lesson moves into a natural setting, pupils observe more closely, ask better questions and take part in experiences that stay with them long after the activity is over. Few places make this argument as convincingly as Tenerife, an island where laurel forests, volcanic craters and the Atlantic coastline sit within an hour of one another.

The course “Outdoor Learning and Adventure Education” took place in Tenerife from 19/07/2026 to 25/07/2026. The participants came from ten schools and institutions across Europe: Francesco from ENAC Veneto – Sfp Madonna del Grappa Treviso in Italy; Aikaterini from Geniko Lykeio Mantamadou Lesvou in Greece; Elina from Lapinlahden kunta, Matin ja Liisan koulu in Finland; Raquel and Sara from Agrupamento de Escolas de Castro Daire in Portugal; Jonna from Lapinlahden kansalaisopisto in Finland; Sylwia from Publiczna Szkoła Podstawowa im. Batalionu „Zośka” w Celestynowie in Poland; Edina from Eszterházy Károly Katolikus Egyetem Gyakorló Általános Iskola, Gimnázium, AMI és Technikum in Hungary; Wioletta from Zespół Szkolno-Przedszkolny w Pawłowicach in Poland; Martina and Lana from Prva privatna gimnazija s pravom javnosti Varaždin in Croatia; and Milan from Gymnázium Pavla Horova in Slovakia.

The week opened with an examination of outdoor education methodologies, and in particular of nature-connected learning. Participants were invited to stop treating the environment as a backdrop and to start treating it as an active co-teacher. A short walk through a city street, they discovered, is already enough to trigger genuine inquiry: it generates questions, stimulates creativity and opens space for the kind of reflection that rarely happens at a desk.

The programme then took the group to some of the most striking landscapes on the island: the Anaga mountains, La Caldera, the surroundings of Puerto de la Cruz and the Teide National Park. These treks were never simply physical exercise. Each route had been designed as a learning environment in its own right, activating all the senses and calling for observation, cooperation and attention to the surroundings. Walking through such different terrains, participants could see how language, social skills, mathematics and science stop being abstract subjects and become something you can point at, measure and discuss on the spot.

Non-formal education, built on direct experience and learning by doing, ran through the entire course. The group practised how to design meaningful activities with very simple materials and how to close them with structured reflection, which is what turns an enjoyable outing into actual learning. This approach helps pupils connect what they do, what they are studying and how they are growing as individuals.

In the final phase, participants designed and presented original lesson ideas tailored to their own schools and age groups. The variety of the proposals said a great deal about the flexibility of outdoor learning: a geography lesson built around an urban scavenger hunt, a poetry walk along a forest path, and many other formats that can be adapted to almost any subject and any budget. The presentations also became an exchange of practices between ten institutions from eight different countries, each one bringing its own school culture into the discussion.

Participants left Tenerife with a set of concrete techniques, but also with a renewed way of looking at teaching and learning. Their own experience during the week made the point better than any theory could: outdoor education is not merely about being outside. It opens up new paths for thinking, feeling and connecting, both for pupils and for the teachers who guide them.

Discover more about this course  here.