Blog Reineke van Tol - Relational outdoor learning is better for neurodivergent students

Text by: Reineke van Tol
Based on research by: Duncan van den Hatert (BSc student Forest & Nature Conservation)

Neurodivergent students, in this text referring to students with AD(H)D or autism¹, face a variety of challenges in regular higher education. These challenges are mainly related to dealing with deadlines, overwhelming stimuli, social interactions and group work. Taken together, these issues often cause students to be misunderstood by teachers and other students, giving the impression that neurodivergent students are lazy, weird or at best, hard to work with. Eventually, these challenges can cause neurodivergent students to drop out of their studies and cause serious mental health problems². There is therefore a need to address these problems and search for alternative more inclusive approaches.Relational outdoor learning is one such approach. Although it has not been designed primarily to improve the learning experience of neurodivergent students, experience has shown that it can be worthwhile to be looked into further.

Continue to her blog post: Relational outdoor learning is better for neurodivergent students - WUR