SCOOL: UK Teacher Survey on Outdoor Learning Enablers and Barriers

A survey dataset from 516 UK teachers collected in September-October 2023 to develop and validate the School Contexts of Outdoor Learning (SCOOL) scale. The research, led by Nicola Parkin, used a sequential mixed-methods approach to capture factors influencing outdoor learning at teacher, school, and national levels. A follow-up survey was conducted with a subset of 200 primary school teachers.

Use Cases

• Validate the SCOOL measurement scale based on survey responses from teachers.
• Analyze enablers and barriers to outdoor learning based on the described ecological model.
• Model relationships between teacher-level, school-level, and national-level factors influencing outdoor education.
• Assess the reliability of the scale over time based on the two-wave survey design.

Strengths

• Data collected from 516 teachers with defined UK residency and employment criteria.
• Includes a two-wave longitudinal component with 200 primary school teacher responses.
• Dataset is small (1.4 MB), facilitating quick download and inspection.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and temporal bias inherent to the UK teacher sample from late 2023.

Provenance

Source

Nicola Parkin via figshare.

Collection Method

Online survey distributed via the Prolific platform.

Time Range

Late September to early October 2023.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-01 15:28:35; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom (UK resident teachers).