Outdoor education is becoming recognized as an important and necessary way of educating in a contemporary learning context. Many experts highlight the importance of including movement and being in the fresh air during the learning process, as research shows that today's students spend a lot of time indoors, and the lifestyle has become sedentary. All of this affects the general loss of students' physical capacity, health, and last but not least, poorer academic performance.
It has been proven that outdoor lessons have many positive effects on the educational process and the psychophysical development of students. It introduces experimental and integrated learning, problem-based learning, and learning through research into the learning process. Despite the many positive effects that this type of teaching has on students, outdoor teachers most often teach the subject of environmental education (spoznavanje okolja...tle nisem zihr) and less often Slovenian lessons. The Slovenian syllabus does not specifically define outdoor lessons but emphasises cross-curricular integration and knowledge acquisition through active forms of learning, i.e. collaborative learning, problem-based learning, and discovery learning. Experts recommend didactic play and various forms of cooperative learning (syllabus Slovenian, 2018), especially in the 1st educational period, which can also be implemented by outdoor lessons. The fact that teachers rarely teach Slovene outdoors is proven by various pieces of research conducted in the field of teaching Slovene outdoors, compared to other subjects. While reviewing the professional literature and research, I did not find any that were done in the field of Slovenian and outdoor learning. This realisation prompted me to research language teaching in non-standard classrooms, i.e. outdoor classrooms.
In my master's thesis, I used quantitative and qualitative research to find out how it is possible to teach the Slovenian language outdoors, outside of the classroom, and to what extent this method of teaching is widespread among primary school teachers in Slovenia. I compiled an online survey for teachers who teach in the 1st educational period, and an interview for a teacher from the Samorog National learning centre (hereinafter referred to as the forest school). Then, I conducted six lessons in the Slovenian language outdoors and conducted one hour of these lessons in the classroom to compare the quality of the implementation of writing activities in the classroom and outdoors.
The results of the research showed that Slovenian teachers are in favour of the concept of forest pedagogy and outdoor teaching, as evidenced by the high proportion of teachers who conduct language lessons outdoors. Students also showed interest in learning outdoors. The research also showed which advantages and challenges the teaching of Slovene outdoors are recognised by teachers who teach in the 1st educational period. I find that most of the language goals from the syllabus and language activities can be achieved outdoors with certain adjustments. The activity of writing outdoors, however, was found to be more difficult to implement in the research.
With the research, I want to emphasise that outdoor language lessons are an effective modern approach to teaching that can complement traditional classroom lessons. Although with such an approach, teachers cannot carry out writing activities in a high-quality way, the number of Slovene lessons allows them to adapt part of the lessons and carry them outdoors. One option for quality outdoor writing activities is to transform part of the school playground into an outdoor classroom that contains chairs and tables. With my master's thesis, I want to encourage RP teachers who teach in the first educational period to learn about the advantages and possibilities of teaching the Slovenian language outdoors, to get additional training on this method of teaching, and implement it more often.
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