Chapter 3: Supporting High-Quality Learning Experiences

Vision for High-Quality Teaching and Learning: A Vignette

A group of learners at an outdoor science organization is moving toward a creek. Pairs are discussing a question asked by the field instructor: “What kinds of body parts and behaviors might help organisms in this stream survive?” An earlier question focused on how conditions in water are different from on land. Learners and adults excitedly share their thoughts—Some may go to the surface to get air. Some might get oxygen from water. The instructor stops the group and invites a few learners to share ideas with the whole group that they discussed with their partners. As learners share, the instructor encourages more learners to build on one another’s ideas about possible explanations for how gills work and offers guidance to help them arrive at an accurate shared understanding.

Before leaving for the creek, the instructor asked how they might work together to learn and grow throughout the day. The instructor invited learners to share experiences from other groups and teams they’ve been a part of: “We’re going to be working together as a team to learn about our surroundings and about one another today. We’ll be paying attention to how to work well as a team. What is a group you’ve been a part of that has worked well together? What made this possible? This could be your class at school, your family, a sports team, a music group, or a group of friends.” Learners share their experiences, perspectives, and the strengths they bring and discuss how they might apply these to their group’s work today. Learners share strengths such as offering interesting perspectives, being good at checking in and making sure everyone’s physical needs are met, humor, etc.

At the creek, the instructor sets boundaries and then gives the group approximately 5 minutes to explore. Learners move about, stopping and pointing, sitting, kneeling, or lying down and generally exploring. There’s fish in there, look! The instructor gathers the group for instructions—in pairs, learners will find and catch organisms from the creek with cups. The instructor quickly models different ways of catching organisms. The instructor shares that learners will also study, observe, and learn about one organism of their choice by discussing ideas with their peers and making a scientific drawing and journal entry. The instructor models making observations of an organism and using words, pictures, and numbers to record them in a journal. For approximately 15 minutes, learners eagerly work together in pairs while the instructor explores with them and offers support. Pairs talk as they work together—Are those legs or antennae? Look, it moves both backward and forward! I wonder how its legs might help it move through the water? After about 10 minutes, the instructor offers each pair an identification key and a guide with information about stream organisms. Pairs work together to identify and learn about their organisms. The instructor and an adult chaperone circulate and offer support to learners in using the key and ask learners questions about their observations and ideas. The field guide answers and confirms some questions learners have, while new questions and ideas pop up. The instructor gathers the group and shares that learners will share some of their ideas and observations about their organisms with one another. The instructor invites one member of each pair to stay with their organism while their partner roams, checking out the organisms other learners have chosen to focus on and engaging in discussion about their questions, observations, and ideas. After a few minutes, partners switch roles.

The area is filled with learners checking out one another’s organisms, drawings and notes and engaging in discussions. Learners share ideas about how the organisms’ body parts and behaviors help them survive in the creek—Do you see this bubble on the beetle? We were wondering if maybe the beetle can use that to breathe underwater! Then we read in the guide that they do collect air bubbles from the surface to breathe underwater! Our organism has big back legs, and we’re wondering if that can help it swim in fast currents. What do you think? At the end of the activity, as the group moves away from the creek in pairs, the instructor offers a series of questions to discuss, such as: “What questions do you still have about the organism you studied?” “What did you do today that helped you learn about your organisms?” “What was it like using scientific thinking skills to learn about your organisms?” “What are some skills you feel you had the opportunity to practice or get better at today?” Learners are excited to share their ideas and reflections with one another—Today I learned a lot by discussing ideas with people. I got to share my observations with so many people, and I got to learn from them too! It was really cool to study animals like a scientist and to learn things from my own observations. I think I got better at slowing down and just enjoying the moment today. It was cool to have so much time to look at things in detail and have fun learning with everyone.

Debriefing the Vignette

This vignette offers a glimpse into what high-quality learner experiences and BEETLES Design Principles can look like in action:

• Engage directly with nature.

• Learners moved around the landscape, made direct observations of organisms, recorded ideas in a journal entry, and asked questions about organisms they found.

• Think like a scientist.

• Learners engaged in science practices to learn directly from their own observations and the ideas of their peers.

• The instructor played the role of the “guide on the side,” offering framing and scaffolding to support learners to make observations, ask questions, and apply scientific thinking skills in order to learn about organisms.

• The activity Discovery Swap focuses on Next Generations Science Standards (NGSS) learning goals related to building understanding of ecosystems; thinking about structure and function; engaging in science practices such as Constructing Explanations and Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information; and offering learners the opportunity to work in collaboration with peers.

• Learn through discussions.

• The discussion questions at the beginning of the activity offered learners an opportunity to begin thinking about the topic and connect to their prior knowledge.

• Throughout the activity, learners had multiple opportunities to share ideas with peers in small groups and with the instructor and the whole group.

• The instructor listened to what learners shared, the ideas they were grappling with, and what they were interested in and used that information to guide instruction to be centered around the interests, needs, and level of understanding of learners.

• Experience instruction based on how people learn. Learners’ experience in this activity was based on the Learning Cycle.

• The activity began with learners accessing their prior knowledge, making connections to their lived experiences, and becoming engaged in the experience (Invitation).

• Then, learners had the opportunity to explore the ecosystem and the organisms that live in it by making direct observations (Exploration).

• As the activity progressed, learners accessed content and learned concepts about organism structure and function through their own observations, discussion with peers, engaging with informational text, and interacting with the instructor (Concept Invention).

• Learners had the opportunity to apply what they learned as they talked about their organisms with peers during the Cool Organism Convention (Application).

• Finally, through paired discussion, learners reflected back on the experience, what they learned, and how they learned it (Reflection).

• Participate in inclusive, equitable, and culturally relevant learning environments. Each of the four previously described design principles contributes to creating an equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant learning experience for learners. Additionally, the activity and instructor:

• asked learners to reflect on the strengths they bring to the group, to consider how their actions can influence group dynamics, and to discuss how they can collaboratively create a supportive context for learning.

• used broad questions to invite learners to share their observations, prior knowledge, and experiences with one another and with the instructor.

• offered multiple opportunities for learners to engage in meaning-making discussions, making observations, and other practices that can prepare learners to take on increasingly rigorous learning tasks in the future.

• scaffolded skills of scientific observation, illustration, and communication to support learners’ visual literacy, language acquisition, and engagement with the activity.

• supported the instructor to act as a “guide on the side” and build a collaborative learning environment in which learners had the opportunity to see themselves and one another (not just the instructor) as sources of expertise.

• connected learners’ in-the-moment learning behaviors to practices of working scientists, contradicting the exclusionary ideas that science is a list of facts to memorize or that only people who are good at memorizing facts can be “good” at science.

This vignette is just one example and vision of what an outdoor science learning experience informed by BEETLES Design Principles might look like. The focus of experiences in your organization may also include other topics or learning goals, such as social emotional learning; restoration projects; or content related to ecosystems, gardens, food justice, community health, or climate change. Regardless of the focus of your programming, the learner-centered and nature-centered approach modeled in Discovery Swap can translate to many types of content areas and outdoor experiences. Using BEETLES Design Principles to inform the structure and development of learning experiences in your organization is one way to make sure instruction is learner-centered, nature-centered, based on research about learning, NGSS designed, and that it reaches your organization’s goals.

Content in This Section

This section offers guidance on moving toward high-quality instruction and learner experiences in your organization, focusing on the following topics:

1. Equity and Justice in Teaching

• The Role of Teaching and Instruction in Moving Toward Equity and Justice

• How BEETLES Design Principles Support Equity and Inclusion in Learner Experiences

2. High-Quality Instructional Materials

• Using BEETLES Activities in Your Programming

  • 1. • • Categories of BEETLES student activities

         • Introducing instructors to BEETLES student activities

         • Suggested order of introducing BEETLES activities to staff

         • Some lessons learned in implementing BEETLES student activities

• Adapting Your Existing Activities and Creating New Activities

  • 1. • • Adapting activities

         • Creating new activities

         • Instructor-designed experiences

• Making Organization-Level Changes to Support High-Quality Learner Experiences

  • 1. • • Sequencing learner experiences

         • Using themes to organize learning experiences

         • Length of outdoor experiences

         • Types of learning experiences

1. Equity and Justice in Teaching

The Role of Teaching and Instruction in Moving Toward Equity and Justice

Teaching and instructional practices are essential in moving toward equity and justice within organizations and throughout the field of outdoor science education. Any teaching experience can be an opportunity to increase equity and inclusion, or it can reinforce existing inequitable power relationships and further marginalize some participants. Even with high-quality instructional materials, instructors can inadvertently marginalize learners or reinforce damaging stereotypes. Paying attention to and reflecting on instructional practices is a critical strategy for advancing equity and justice. BEETLES Design Principles (described in the next section) in the specific context of equity and justice can serve as guideposts to instructors on equitable instruction.

How BEETLES Design Principles Support Equity and Inclusion in Learner Experiences

Focusing on making learning experiences learner-centered and nature-centered also makes them more equitable and inclusive experiences for learners. BEETLES Design Principles and practices that support equitable and inclusive learning experiences for learners are one and the same.

When learners engage directly with nature, they all have access to learning, regardless of their prior knowledge or experiences. Centering learning on learners’ in-the-moment observations of nature builds an inclusive learning experience by focusing the conversation on an experience shared by every learner, as opposed to relying on learners’ prior knowledge or past experiences. As learners engage with nature, instructors are in the role of a “guide on the side.” This approach shifts power from the instructor to learners, challenges the typical learning situation in which the instructor is the only expert, encourages learners to share their ideas and experiences, and makes learning a more decentralized and collaborative experience.

When learners think like scientists and practice academic language, they develop critical thinking skills that support them to become more independent learners (learners who have skills and thinking tools they use to learn regardless of the level of support available from a teacher or instructor). Giving learners the opportunity to “think like a scientist” by making observations, asking questions, and constructing explanations supports learners’ growth as learners, offering them the opportunity to build critical thinking skills and learning behaviors they can apply in any context. Many learners in schools that have historically been under-resourced due to racist school funding policies, red-lining, income inequality, and police profiling have fewer opportunities to develop as independent learners. Specifically ensuring that learners attending under-resourced schools have opportunities to develop as independent learners is an issue of equity. Learning and practicing critical thinking skills in an engaging outdoor context supports learners to succeed back in their classrooms, in science, and other academic disciplines. Offering opportunities for learners to discuss ideas with their peers and knowledgeable adults makes science as a discipline more accessible by connecting it to learners’ own actions and discoveries in the moment—not to knowledge or experiences they may not have had. Offering learners the opportunity to practice and build transferable learning skills is also one way to support them in engaging in work in their communities.

Through discussion, learners make connections to prior knowledge, share their lived experiences, listen to different perspectives, and have time to process the material. Productive discussions, in which many voices are heard and the group builds off one another’s ideas, create experiences in which learners see themselves and one another—not just the instructor—as sources of expertise. This ensures that instructors don’t fall back on positioning themselves as the only source of accurate or important information. Participating in discussions also supports learners to develop cognitive rigor and the ability to take on more advanced learning tasks. Discussions make learners’ thinking and ideas visible to the instructor. When instructors value, appreciate, better understand, and connect to learners’ lived experiences, they create a more inclusive and culturally relevant learning space. Finally, multiple opportunities for discussion offer time and space for neurodiversity, as it creates time for learners to process information in different ways. Using discussion strategies such as Turn & Share or Thought Swap (formerly known as Walk & Talk) that are part of every BEETLES student activity can help ensure that learners have these kinds of opportunities for discussion.

Using the Learning Cycle supports access by offering a learner-centered alternative to instructor-centered, information- and fact-delivery teaching and curriculum design. Sequencing experiences by using the Learning Cycle bakes research on how people learn into learning experiences and offers learners the opportunity to build understanding gradually and through phases of different modalities. Learning Cycle–based curriculum and teaching helps make sure learning experiences are accessible and valuable for all learners.

Participate in inclusive, equitable, and culturally relevant learning environments. Each of the four previously described design principles contributes to creating an equitable, inclusive,

and culturally relevant learning experience for learners. Offering consistent opportunities for discussion allows learners and the instructor to hear one another’s perspectives and ideas. Centering student discussion and observations disrupts traditional dynamics of an instructor-centered classroom, shifting power from the instructor to learners, and makes learning a more decentralized and collaborative experience. Prioritizing collaborative learning experiences is an opportunity to build community among learners and to ground teaching in relationships. Focusing on engaging directly with nature centers the learning on a common experience every learner has access to, regardless of prior experiences or knowledge.

Overall, these factors contribute to creating a learner-centered approach in which “the ultimate goal . . . is to help students take over the reins of their learning” (Hammond, 2014, p.100). This approach to teaching supports learners in becoming independent learners who are able to succeed, regardless of any individual teacher or learning context. BEETLES has intentionally designed the sequence and structure of each activity to support learning experiences in which all learners feel capable of success and have the tools to carry that success into other domains.

High-quality instructional materials should include these design principles in the design of all learner experiences. Educative sidebars in the materials can be reminders to instructors about why the activity is designed as it is. Systems for using instructional materials should lead with equity and justice to ensure that materials are relevant and accessible.

2. High-Quality Instructional Materials

In this section, we’ll discuss how being intentional about the instructional materials used in your organization can help you make sure the teaching and learning that happens within your programming supports and reinforces your organization’s goals. Discovery Swap, as described in the vignette, is a student activity designed to engage students in learner-centered and nature-centered learning. It was tested by a wide range of instructors and revised based on their feedback. It’s an example of what we at BEETLES mean when we refer to high-quality instructional materials. One reliable way to increase the likelihood of high-quality instruction and equity in learner experiences in your organization is to provide high-quality instructional materials. High-quality materials help ensure a baseline experience for every learner who comes through your doors (or trees!). When any instructor leads Discovery Swap as written, they’ll know that their learners will get to spend time engaging directly with nature, discussing ideas with peers, and deepening their understanding of science ideas. This section focuses on how to offer your instructors quality teaching materials to use with learners and how to assess whether your overall organizational structure supports the thoughtful use of those materials. Coaching, reflection, and professional learning (described in the previous section) are also critical to helping your instructors become skilled users of high-quality curriculum. Even with access to high-quality curriculum, all instructors can continually improve their ability to make informed, in-the-moment instructional decisions with their learners.

To make sure your instructors have access to high-quality instructional materials, we encourage you to continually revisit and assess the activities used at your organization, adapting, improving, or shifting them as you and your teaching staff grow and as your understanding of teaching and learning and your organization’s goals and priorities shift. You might choose to (1) use published activities (such as BEETLES) that are research-based and tested; (2) adapt your existing activities; or (3) create new activities, using research-based pedagogy.

Using BEETLES Student Activities in Your Programming

BEETLES student activities are not meant to be a comprehensive curriculum, and there is no “right” way to implement them. Organizations use the activities to support their goals and their students’ learning as they see fit. BEETLES student activities are meant to be used in tandem with professional learning (PL) sessions, which offer instructors opportunities to develop their understanding of the pedagogy and concepts behind the student activities and to build skills as practitioners. BEETLES activities follow the Learning Cycle, are learner-centered, discussion-based, nature-centered, culturally relevant, and offer learners opportunities to develop scientific habits of mind. BEETLES activities also include opportunities for learners to engage in Social and Emotional Learning and include practices to create an equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant learning experience. Some BEETLES activities are concept-specific, focusing on big ideas in science such as adaptations and evolution or ecosystems, matter, and energy. Other BEETLES activities are flexible routines that can be used in a variety of ways with a wide range of science topics. There are enough BEETLES activities to fill many days of programming, and they can be sequenced together to create cohesive experiences in nature, sometimes delving deeply into complex concepts. BEETLES activities can also be combined with other activities in your organization, or they can simply serve as model activities to help instructors get a feel for high-quality instruction.

Categories of BEETLES student activities.

We’ve organized our student activities into the following categories to help instructors and organization leaders understand the characteristics and value of each type of activity and also to help them make informed decisions about when and how to use each activity with learners:

• Exploration routines. These activities can be used again and again in different settings to promote exploration, curiosity, and a scientific mindset.

• Discussion routines. These activities can be used again and again to promote and structure discussion.

• Field journaling activities. These activities support other learning experiences by helping learners observe nature deeply through engaging in field journaling as scientists do. (Note: These aren't BEETLES activities, but were developed by our friend John Muir Laws, in partnership with fellow BEETLE Emilie Lygren, and are available at howtoteachnaturejournaling.com.)

• Focused explorations. These activities help learners spend sustained time exploring a certain feature of nature, such as lichen, bark beetles, or a decomposing log.

• Assessment and reflection activities. These activities help learners reflect on their learning and reveal what they understand to instructors.

• Science investigation activities. These activities help learners plan, conduct, and make sense of field science investigations.

• Garden activities. These learner-centered activities engage students in learning about worms and compost.

• Concept-focused activities. These activities help learners develop deep understanding of concepts such as adaptations or matter and energy in ecosystems.

• Night activities. These activities are used on a night field experience or in an indoor night program.

• Themed field experiences. This resource includes a sequence of activities focused around a specific area of content.

Introducing instructors to BEETLES student activities. Make a plan for how your instructors will learn about and use new student activities. BEETLES activity write-ups are meant to be educative. In other words, they offer instructors the opportunity to learn about teaching (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Davis & Krajcik, 2005). They include background science information, information about the pedagogy behind the activity, common misconceptions, connections to equitable and inclusive teaching practices, and instructional options for different situations. It takes time to read, process, and plan to facilitate a BEETLES activity, and it won't work well for an instructor to pick up one and read it 5 minutes before they teach it. Make it an expectation that as professionals, instructors will take the time to carefully read write-ups before teaching. Consider creating time to read lesson plans and prepare for teaching within the structure and schedule of your organization.

Suggested order of introducing BEETLES activities to staff. All BEETLES student activities have been tested by many instructors, and we don’t publish them until we know they’ve been successful with many different groups of learners in many different parts of the country. Still, some BEETLES activities are more challenging to lead than others, and it can take time for instructors who are new to leading learners in genuine exploration, science discussions (which can be particularly challenging), or teaching in general. We’ve learned which activities are easier for many instructors who have less experience using learner-centered and nature-centered approaches and which activities are better led by instructors with more experience.

Recommendations for when instructors might begin learning, using, and continuing to use each student activity are listed in Table 3: Which Activities to Introduce to Staff and When. It’s not a table indicating when instructors should use the activities with learners.

Activities toward the left side of the table tend to be easier to lead, and those toward the right side tend to require more experience. Using activities toward the left can help an instructor build the skills needed to eventually lead the activities toward the right. (Note: We suggest that all organizations embrace exploration routines, discussion routines, and focused explorations, but other rows of the chart will not be relevant to all organizations.) All the categories in the table offer instructors experience with carefully crafted activities to help them learn pedagogy. It’s useful to identify other goals you have so you can better choose categories from the left column. As a first step, we suggest choosing the goals you have for introducing student activities to your staff. Is it to give them tools to increase frequency of certain types of learner experiences in your programming, such as exploration, discussion, or field journaling? Is it to offer instructors activities they can use to lead a sequence of activities related to certain concepts with learners, such as adaptations or ecosystems? Is it to build their skills at guiding learners to conduct their own science investigations? Once you’ve identified your goals, choose a category in the left-hand column of the chart and then look at those rows for guidance on a suggested sequence to introduce these to your staff.

Some lessons learned in implementing BEETLES student activities. Following are some important additional considerations we have from organization leaders:

• Use student activity write-ups and notes. BEETLES activities are written up thoughtfully and carefully, with much attention to the language and sequencing of the activity. Reading a student activity write-up before leading the activity is essential. While it's possible to see a BEETLES activity once and then lead it with learners without looking at the write-up, much tends to be lost, and the quality tends to decrease. The write-up includes carefully crafted and tested questions and sequencing, as well as important information. Encouraging instructors to read the write-up fully can help ensure that these things don't get lost. To make sure the activities are given their best chance of success, set a tone of intention, preparation, and professionalism in which instructors are expected to read write-ups and prepare before teaching. Invite instructors to read the educative features of BEETLES write-ups and offer that reading a BEETLES activity thoroughly is a way to become a better instructor. Encourage instructors to read the teaching tips, lists of common misconceptions, and descriptions of the rationale behind different strategies used in the activity write-up. Additionally, we have sought feedback from community partners and have revised and republished several of our activities to remove harmful language and include stronger framing and connections to equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant teaching practices. These are also highlighted and explained in the write-ups. Reading activity write-ups closely can support instructors to deepen their understanding of teaching practices and develop skills such as questioning strategies, responding to learners, teaching more equitably and inclusively, and developing Learning Cycle–based lessons.

• Don’t alter the activities (at first). As with PL sessions, there are adjustments that instructors can make with any activity to better serve the unique group of learners they are working with at the time. These adjustments should be made after an instructor has taught the activity a few times very close to the way it was designed, written, and tested in order to get a feel for the sequencing and language. Significantly altering the sequencing and language of the activities—such as skipping Exploration or other phases of the Learning Cycle or turning broad questions into narrow questions—will most often compromise their effectiveness. The sidebars, teaching notes, and background section in every BEETLES activity can help inform instructors' decisions about how to make these kinds of adjustments for different audiences without compromising the activity.

• Use field notes. All BEETLES activities have a field card (a small card showing the main steps of the activity). Encourage instructors to carry field cards and use them as presenter notes when they teach. Instructors may worry that if learners see them looking at notes, they might lose respect. Offer the idea that, if anything, using notes is a sign of professionalism, thoughtfulness, and care and will result in better teaching (as long as an instructor isn't staring at their notes or reading directly from them). Field cards help an instructor remember key questions and the order of steps and phases of the activity. (Heck, even though we wrote these activities, we all still use the field cards to remember steps and specific questions).

• Return to the actual activity write-up (occasionally). While field cards are designed to be complete enough to teach from, they only include an outline of the activity. We recommend that instructors return to the actual write-up every few times they teach the activity. There’s a LOT of information in BEETLES write-ups, and it’s easy to forget parts. After teaching it a few times, an instructor may realize that a note that didn’t seem important the first time they read it may now seem very useful, relevant, and influence their instruction. Rereading the full activity write-up is important if instructors continue to lead it over time (and yes, we also reread the write-ups now and then when we are about to teach them).

Adapting Your Existing Activities and Creating New Activities

We encourage organizations to use BEETLES activities and materials, but we’ve found that most organizations also need to use their own place-based and context-specific activities. Many organizations we have worked with have decided to modify activities they have used for a long period of time to better reflect research-based practices and pedagogy. Other organizations we’ve worked with have designed new activities from scratch. Considerations for both approaches are described in this section.

Adapting activities. Many organizations adapt their existing activities to reflect the pedagogy and strategies, described in BEETLES materials, to move toward a more learner-centered and nature-centered approach. This process can be challenging but worthwhile. One organization's approach is detailed in the feature: How We Adapted Existing Activities.

Camp Seymour’s approach to revising their instructional materials offers valuable insights. They were strategic and intentional. It was a long-term approach that anticipated and accounted for the needs of instructors. Regardless of the conditions in your organization, a measured and careful approach is more likely to succeed than a rushed one. Camp Seymour had members of their leadership team driving the overall revision process, and they made room to include instructors meaningfully in the revision process with structure and guidance, which generated buy-in. Senior staff taught some BEETLES activities first to get the feel of nature-centered, learner-centered instruction and then made overall suggestions for revisions to Camp Seymour activities that were then implemented by less experienced staff. They also made sure staff who were responsible for changes to their curriculum had some professional learning experiences on best practices of teaching. The process the leaders used included testing ideas and activities, modifying their professional learning, and communicating with their clients about their process.

If your organization chooses to revise your existing activities, you might make some initial changes and then continue the process by making several passes at the activity, each with a different focus for the revisions. A first pass at a lesson might be focused on restructuring it to be Learning Cycle–based (e.g., adding in invitational questions and discussion, making plenty of time for exploration early on in the activity, shifting the order of parts of the activity to make sure facts are only offered after learners explore and before they apply their learning). A second pass might focus on adding more interesting, relevant, broad questions and ensuring that there is enough time for learners to engage directly with nature and discuss ideas with their peers. A third pass might pay attention to deepening opportunities for learners to engage in science practices. Another pass might focus on the accuracy of science content. And yet another could center on making sure all the language in the activity is inclusive.

Our resource Creating Effective Outdoor Science Activities focuses on revising and developing activities so they reflect BEETLES Design Principles and learner-centered and nature-centered teaching practices. We also encourage organizations to regularly revisit, assess, and revise their curriculum and instructional materials intentionally as their understanding of equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant teaching practices grows. Forming partnerships with organizations in your community who hold this kind of expertise (and paying them for their time!) can be a valuable way to include this kind of feedback and get support to shift your practices and activities.

Over a few years, the BEETLES team has been working to revise some of our own materials in partnership with Justice Outside and with guidance from José González (founder of Latino Outdoors) and The Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. A list of BEETLES activities that have been through a rigorous revision process based on feedback about equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant teaching practices from our community partners can be found here: http://beetlesproject.org/equity-revisions/.

Creating new activities. After getting excited through PL sessions and BEETLES student activities, many organizations have created brand-new instructional materials to reflect research-based practices and learner-centered and nature-centered pedagogy.

Designing quality instructional materials is a challenging and complex process. We made an entirely separate document describing our approach to it.

As with revising existing activities, it's important to have a cohesive, long-term plan for creating new instructional materials from scratch to ensure quality. Plan for several weeks or months to move through the process of designing new activities, testing them, and getting feedback from instructors and learners. When deciding who will be primarily responsible for designing new materials, pull together a team of individuals who hold different roles and responsibilities in your organization, such as an organization leader, lead teacher, and an instructor and offer support in developing their understanding of pedagogy, BEETLES Design Principles, science concepts you decide to focus on, and the ways those concepts are present in the local ecology and communities. Plan how you will design your activities to make use of equitable, inclusive, and culturally relevant teaching practices; if you do not have this expertise on your staff, form partnerships with community organizations who do and pay them to support you to develop that expertise or to play a role in designing your curriculum. Take your context and organization goals into account, looking toward vision statements and short- and long-term strategic planning in deciding the scope and focus of your new materials.

Before the design process begins, another critical piece to consider is engaging community partners from the audiences you engage or hope to engage in determining the concepts and content that is the focus of the curriculum. Prioritize topics that will be relevant and meaningful, and interesting to your learners, and create pathways for engaging learners and community partners in informing the topics and content your organization will focus on, such as through a community advisory board or a partnership with local organizations. The feature Tale from the Field: Forming Community Partnerships to Inform Curriculum Design with the Native Voices Project offers one example of forming a community partnership to inform curriculum topics and design.

Instructor-designed experiences. Some organizations don’t have required established materials or activities, and instructors are responsible for designing the lessons and activities they lead. While many instructors enjoy this autonomy, this practice can lead to a large variation in the quality and type of learners’ experiences. If it's a priority of your organization for instructors to design their own lessons and activities, consider giving instructors access to high-quality instructional materials first and making sure there are clearly communicated expectations and design principles for the creation of new materials. This not only gives some baseline quality to learner experiences, using materials that reflect best practices can also inform and be a model for the kinds of activities an instructor later designs themself. We recommend, especially for organizations that focus on intern professional learning, that instructors become experienced with teaching several BEETLES (or other high-quality) activities before designing their own. Then, once instructors are comfortable leading BEETLES (or other high-quality) activities, offer structure and scaffolding to support instructors to design their own learning experiences.

A good way for beginner instructors to “get their feet wet” with activity design is to invite them to find something on site they think will be intriguing to learners, then take the BEETLES exploration routine Discovery Swap, and use it as written but with the content focused on their subject of choice. Using Discovery Swap as a template ensures that the activity will be learner-centered, nature-centered, and Learning Cycle–based while offering the instructor the opportunity to choose a content area that is exciting to them.

Once instructors begin to design their own experiences, consider setting up a peer-review structure to build more revision and testing into the process. Instructors can read one another’s activity drafts and offer feedback, practice teaching the activities with one another before teaching the activity with learners, and then reflect on the activity and make adjustments after trying it out with learners.

Make sure your overall organization structure gives learners opportunities to make connections to prior knowledge, to explore nature and ideas, to invent concepts, to apply their knowledge, and to reflect on their learning. This might mean streamlining academic goals or reducing the expectations in terms of the amount of content shared with learners in favor of deeper and more effective higher-quality learning experiences. Use the Teaching and Learning PL session and the suggested follow-up activities to begin having these kinds of conversations with your staff.

2. Using themes to organize learning experiences. Choosing a theme as an organizing principle can be a useful way to structure a field experience. Depending on your organization’s goals, themes might include specific science concepts, a local environmental justice issue, one of the NGSS Crosscutting Concepts, building a mindset of curiosity and exploration, discovering nature mysteries, the nature of science, or interpersonal skills/team-building. Themes should be focused enough to offer learners a useful mental scaffold to help organize new information, but broad enough that instructors have flexibility to respond to learners’ prior knowledge and interests.

3. Length of outdoor experiences. There’s a huge variety in how much outdoor time organizations offer learners. Any opportunity for outdoor learning is positive, but research tells us that longer experiences and multiple experiences (if feasible) increase the impact for learners. Some research has found that the more novel the setting for an outdoor learning experience, the more meaningful the experience will be for learners. A longer experience doesn’t necessarily lead to more novelty, but a longer visit can offer the opportunity for learners to spend meaningful time discovering and engaging with the smaller “novel” things we can find anywhere we look deep, or to move further afield to different landscapes and ecosystems. Longer learning experiences also offer more time for learners to engage deeply in science practices and inquiry and build understanding of complex concepts and ideas.

The amount of time your organization can spend on field experiences may be determined by factors you have little control over, such as school bus schedules. Still, think about where there might be room to extend the length of student learning experiences. Many one-day programs have found success in shifting from a station-based teaching approach (where learners spend a shorter amount of time rotating between stations that focus on different concepts) to single, longer learning experiences that go into more depth on a single concept. Other organizations have worked with their participants and community partners to adjust their schedule and extend learning experiences. Other changes in infrastructure, such as shifting from lunches served in a dining hall to picnic lunches or reducing the number of locations that learners visit during a program are also ways to increase the length of outdoor learning experiences.

4. Types of learning experiences. Assess if your organization structure and the types of experiences your organization offers best meet your goals and help staff use materials effectively to support high-quality student learning experiences. Table 4: Types of Learner Experiences outlines some common types of experiences in outdoor science organizations and positive attributes and drawbacks of each one. Think about which ones your organization uses or could use, if they match your organization goals, and if you are taking advantage of the strengths or are falling into some of the pitfalls for each type of experience.

Many organizations include a combination of all or most of these different types of experiences, leading to dynamic, rich, and balanced experiences for learners, which is a strong approach. If learners only explore nature slowly, they will probably crave movement. If a group only hikes from place to place, they miss slowing down and engaging deeply with their surroundings. If a program is long enough, ideally learners should have opportunities to explore slowly, adventure, and hike to destinations during their experience. Strive to make sure the length, pace, and focus of your organization supports your goals for high-quality teaching and learning and the instructional materials your staff is using.