“Building Roots”—Developing Agency, Competence, and a Sense of Belonging through Education outside the Classroom

Bibliographic Data

ID22043874
AuthorsGabriele Lauterbach (0000-0003-1908-0496, University of Stavanger, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume13
Issue11
Pages1107
Publication date2023-11-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducation Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2227-7102 • E-ISSN: 2227-7102
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/educsci13111107
OpenAlexW4388304811
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited66

This study investigates how Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) was used to support the students’ basic psychological needs, i.e., their need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness as described in Self-Determination Theory (SDT). The framework of Ecological Psychology (EP) was applied to explicate how the EOtC teaching settings helped the students to become effective, agentic, and connected. The findings show that this process was driven by their active engagement with environmental affordances which facilitated embodied experiences. Moreover, the interplay with place and people specifically reinforced their satisfaction of relatedness and created a deepened sense of belonging to their community. It is concluded that in order to foster the children’s healthy psychological and physiological development in EOtC, teachers should make use of the affordances and invitations of specific places as a starting point for their teaching to support the students to develop agency, competence and sense of belonging

Affordance · Autonomy · Cognitive psychology · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Pedagogy · Self-determination theory · Sense of agency · Social science · Sociology · Environmental Education and Sustainability · Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports · Psychology · Social Psychology · Youth Development and Social Support

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