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Growing Beyond Gender: Practices for Outdoor Educators

This practical guide is designed to help educators construct, deconstruct, reflect, create, innovate, and unlearn. Readers are encouraged to use the material that resonates with their context, adapt what does not, and share their experiences with others.

Gender inclusion is not about erasing differences. It is about ensuring that all children, regardless of their gender identity or expression, have equal opportunities to explore, learn, and fully develop.

In nature-based pedagogy, the openness of outdoor play offers a valuable setting to observe and question gender stereotypes. However, without conscious observation and intentional pedagogical intervention, unconscious biases may continue to shape interactions, expectations, and opportunities.

This guide provides extensive material and references to support work on gender inclusion at multiple levels — personal, team, and institutional — helping educators reflect on and adjust their practices.

In collaboration with:

KWEEBUS
Edunat Cooperativa
CanaleScuola
Educare nel Bosco · Pecorile ·
QUEST

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.

More publications

QUEST’S Response to the European Commission’s Call for Evidence on New Education Package

This submission responds jointly to the three linked initiatives open for evidence : - Strengthening basic skills and improving performance in school education - EU Teachers Agenda: Enhancing the attractiveness of the education and training profession - Quality education for all: a 2040 roadmap

The Reclaiming Education Toolkit

This toolkit wants to demystify EU advocacy and help you navigate local and European decision-making, so that your school / organisation can raise their concerns and visions for education at different levels.

The Change We Want: A Manifesto by Rural Young People in Europe

At QUEST, we believe young people don’t need adults to translate what they want to say. Too often, they are tokenised, routinely consulted to check a box, yet shut out from meaningful decision-making on the very issues that shape their lives. They need real space to say it, and real doors opened to the people who can act on it. Giving rural youth the room to define their own demands, in their own words and their own format, and then walking those demands into institutions like the EESC and the Committee of the Regions, is exactly the kind of empowerment we exist to make possible.