How do tutor prompts facilitate scientific learning?

Although a great deal of research has examined teacher–student dialogue in classrooms, far less has focused on learning in outdoor environments. Teaching on a rocky shore or within a glacial cwm requires the management of many additional factors: are the students warm? Can they hear me in this wind? How long can we linger before they become restless or cold? How much time do we have at each stop if we are to keep to our return journey?

Within these dynamic environments, I was interested to work with the Field Studies Council to understand how tutors use questions to move students beyond memory recall “What glacial feature are we standing on?”, towards thinking about how and why that feature formed. I made short recordings of tutors’ teaching to descriptively examine these prompts and provide reflective summaries of their practice.

We were also interested in how teaching might differ between centres. The Rhyd-y-Creuau centre in Eryri offers access to mountains, rivers and the coast, while FSC’s work in London and Epping Forest takes place within very different urban and peri-urban environments. I therefore spent 3 months with the FSC, moving between centres and environments, and we look forward to sharing the outputs of our research soon.