Learning outdoors: why not?

The democratization of education owes a lot to the needs that arose at this time - the factories needed skilled labour and, therefore, expanding the schools supply to the lower classes met this need.

But it is not only in the democratization of education that the effects of the Industrial Revolution are felt, also in the configuration of classrooms, to the more traditional one that we still use today.

The Taylorist model in educational management is still very much present in the way we view education, and a great example of this is how and where we learn. From an early age we are used to entering a classroom and observing the classic arrangement: teacher in front and students sitting one behind the other. Sometimes we even innovate in the way we arrange the chairs, even take away the tables and challenge the students and teachers to try other possibilities inside the classroom, but never outside. Why?

In Scandinavia, in the 1950's, the first Forest School was founded - this movement has since expanded to Portugal. In these forest schools, directed mainly to children, the learning processes happen outdoors, often by observing the surroundings. Through this new methodology, it was realized that, by removing the four walls that often embrace us, the potential in the learning process is immense.

So we ask you: why aren't more outside learning experiences for executives being developed?

For Pedro Hipólito, participant High Performance Leadership program,the advantages of leaving our comfort zone and learning in an external environment are clear.

In his opinion, learning outdoors activates the body and its senses, allowing participants to be more focused and increasing their retention capacity. The environment provided is more relaxed which in turn increases participation. These are all advantages that make us realize that there is indeed room outside the classroom for learning, and that sometimes thinking outside the box is literally stepping outside of it.

We are currently living the 4th industrial revolution where technology, artificial intelligence and robotics seem to be the future, we challenge you to think what future awaits us in Education? Do we stay in or do we go out?