Growing Relationships at Forest School Through Facilitation, Not Teaching

Step into a Forest School session and you’ll rarely find a 'lesson plan.' You’ll find play: muddy hands, imaginations at work, laughter echoing between trees. Yet, what looks like 'just play' is actually the heart of a profound pedagogy.

In a previous blog I wrote about how good Forest School practice is not about teaching activities; it’s about facilitating child-led, self-directed play that nurtures relationships: with self, with others, and with the natural world. Drawing on the work of Perry Else, Gordon Sturrock, Bob Hughes, and Susan Isaacs, as well as experiential theorists like Jen Stanchfield, David Kolb, and Otto Scharmer, this piece explores how play and facilitation intertwine within each of the six Forest School principles, and why 'teaching' risks undermining them.

Teaching or Facilitating? The Roots of Relationship in Outdoor Learning

Before exploring the six principles, it’s important to understand the difference between teaching and facilitating, a distinction that lies at the very heart of outdoor education’s history. Traditional teaching has often been rooted in the delivery of knowledge and the measurement of outcomes, what learners can recall, reproduce, or demonstrate. By contrast, facilitation, as described by Kolb (1984) and expanded upon by Stanchfield (2016), is the art of guiding experience. It prioritises process over product and curiosity over compliance.

Outdoor education has long held a relational philosophy, from the early work of Kurt Hahn at Outward Bound to modern experiential frameworks. The aim was never just to 'teach' about the outdoors but to build relationship through experience; with self, community, and environment. In this sense, Forest School continues a proud tradition of learning through lived experience, not for external objectives but for internal transformation. The facilitator’s role is to weave connection—holding space for exploration, emotional growth, and meaning-making—rather than to lead from the front or dictate outcomes.

This distinction is more than pedagogical; it’s ethical. It asks adults to trust in the learner’s innate capacity to learn, and to honour the forest as an active participant in that process.

Facilitation, Play and Forest School Principles

Forest School is guided by six key principles that are sometimes interpreted in different ways. This ambiguity has, at times, created challenges within the field—particularly in school settings where teaching predetermined lessons is often prioritised over facilitating emergent experiences. Such tensions can pull practice away from the heart of the Forest School ethos, which is grounded in developing deep relationships with nature, self, and community.Let’s explore why embracing the role of facilitator rather than teacher is essential to upholding these principles and preserving the true spirit of Forest School.

Principle 1. Regular Sessions in a Natural Setting

Principle: Forest School is a long-term process of regular sessions in a natural setting.

In the language of playwork, continuity of access to space and time is what allows deep play (Hughes, 2002) to unfold. It’s through repeated, open-ended encounters that children build secure attachments to place and people.

As Perry Else (2009) describes, play is a biopsychosocial need—it supports self-regulation, wellbeing, and belonging. Forest School’s long-term rhythm meets that need beautifully.

A facilitator recognises that repeated visits aren’t just 'sessions'; they’re opportunities for the child to return, reimagine, and reconnect; developing confidence and ownership.

Principle 2. Connection with the Natural World

Principle: Forest School fosters deep, meaningful relationships between learners and the natural world.

Play is the child’s way of being with the world. As Perry Else (2009) writes, play is not a rehearsal for life, it is life. In the forest, this life unfolds in constant dialogue with nature: hiding, building, wondering, collecting, and caring. Scharmer’s (2009) 'open heart' and Whitney’s (2010) positive inquiry both align with this sense of mutuality. Facilitators honour the forest as co-facilitator—an active participant in play, not a backdrop for it.

Principle 3. Holistic Development

Principle: Forest School promotes holistic development—resilience, confidence, creativity, and independence.

For Susan Isaacs (1932), play is ‘the child’s work’, the means through which they integrate emotional, cognitive, and social experiences.

Facilitators, therefore, hold space within environments rich in possibilities but free from prescription. Play itself becomes the curriculum. Jen Stanchfield (2016) reminds us that reflection transforms experience into learning. In Forest School, reflection often happens within play—through storytelling, role-play, or quiet noticing.

Principle 4: Encouragement of Risk and Challenge

Principle: Forest School offers learners opportunities to take supported risks.

Play inherently involves risk—physical, emotional, and social. Hughes (2002) calls this deep play, where children push their limits to experience mastery and joy.

A facilitator’s role is to enable safe uncertainty, to create what Diana Whitney (2010) might call an appreciative, strengths-based environment where courage and exploration are celebrated.

Principle 5. Supported by Qualified Practitioners

Principle: Forest School is led by qualified practitioners who reflect on and develop their practice.

Gordon Sturrock and Perry Else (1998) describe the adult’s role in play as, 'setting the conditions for possibility.' This is facilitation in its purest form.

The qualified Forest School leader acts as a play facilitator rather than a director, observing, attuning, and gently extending where needed. Like Ruth Cohn’s (1975) balance of “I–We–It,” the leader attends simultaneously to the individual, the group, and the environment.

Their reflective stance aligns with Kolb’s (1984) experiential cycle and Robert Garmston’s (2013) notion of adaptive practice—constantly adjusting in response to what is emerging.

Principle 6. Learner-Centred Process

Principle: Forest School uses a learner-centred approach shaped by curiosity and interest.

Here, play theory and facilitation theory meet perfectly. Bob Hughes (2002) defines play as freely chosen, personally directed, and intrinsically motivated. A facilitator understands that learning flows from this freedom. They notice what draws the child’s attention; a puddle, a stick, an imagined creature, and follow the play, not redirect it. This mirrors Kolb’s emphasis on learner agency and Scharmer’s (2009) call to 'learn from the emerging future.'

Facilitation in Practical Skills: Tools, Fire, and the Spirit of Enquiry

Even within the seemingly structured realms of tool use and fire lighting, facilitation (not teaching) remains the guiding approach. These practical skills are not lessons to be delivered but pathways for curiosity, mastery, and meaning-making.

When a child expresses interest in using a knife, bow saw, or fire striker, the facilitator’s role is to invite enquiry rather than deliver instruction. Instead of “Here’s how you carve a stick,” the facilitator might ask:

“What draws you to that tool today?”

“How might we use this safely?”

“What can we notice about the wood as we shape it?”

These open questions align with Jen Stanchfield’s (2016) reflective practice and Kolb’s (1984) experiential cycle—encouraging children to engage cognitively, emotionally, and physically with the experience.

Facilitation also means co-regulating, not controlling. When a learner tends a fire, the adult models mindfulness and respect, listening to the crackle, noticing the heat, inviting sensory reflection.

“What’s happening to the wood as it burns?”

“What do you notice when you add air or more sticks?”

Such enquiry transforms skill practice into relationship-building, with materials, elements, and self. In this way, the use of tools and fire remain true to Bob Hughes’ (2002) concept of deep play: risk-filled but self-directed exploration that builds competence and confidence. The facilitator trusts the child’s intrinsic motivation to master challenge within a supportive framework.

Even in the presence of sharp tools and open flames, the process matters more than the product. Facilitation ensures that safety and skill emerge through awareness and agency, not obedience. The forest itself becomes co-teacher—whispering lessons about patience, consequence, and respect for living materials.

When adults teach in nature, they transfer knowledge.When they facilitate play in nature, they nurture belonging. Forest School’s six principles are not a checklist—they’re a living invitation to trust play as the bridge between humans and the more-than-human world.

To hold that space requires courage: to step back, to listen deeply, and to believe that through play, every child already knows how to learn.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to join the conversation in the comments below—your questions, stories, and perspectives are always welcome. Whether we agree or not, every discussion adds depth to these conversations, and respectful dialogue is what makes this space truly valuable.

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References

Cohn, R. C. (1975). The theme-centered interaction (TCI) approach to group dynamics. Klett-Cotta.

Else, P. (2009). The value of play. Continuum International Publishing Group.

Forest School Association. (2016). The six principles of Forest School. Retrieved from https://forestschoolassociation.org

Garmston, R. J., & Wellman, B. M. (2013). The Adaptive School: A Sourcebook for Developing Collaborative Groups(2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.

Hughes, B. (2002). A playworker’s taxonomy of play types (2nd ed.). PlayLink.

Isaacs, S. (1932). The children we teach. University of London Press.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice-Hall.

Scharmer, O. C. (2009). Theory U: Leading from the future as it emerges. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Stanchfield, J. (2016). Tips and Tools: The Art of Experiential Group Facilitation. Wood Nymph Press.

Sturrock, G., & Else, P. (1998). The playground as therapeutic space: Playwork as healing. In Play in a Changing Society(pp. 25–41). National Playing Fields Association.

Whitney, D., & Trosten-Bloom, A. (2010). The power of appreciative inquiry: A practical guide to positive change (2nd ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers