Pioneering Forest School at Dulwich College (Singapore)

What is Forest School

‘Forest School’ refers to both a specific pedagogy and the name of the location where it takes place. Its roots lie within the Scandinavian concept of ‘Friluftsliv,’ which roughly translates into “open-air living.’ It encapsulates not only a one-ness with the environment but your ability to operate within it competently.  

At DCSG we have taken the fundamental ideological tenets of Forest School – the cultivation of tenacity, ethics (both personal and environmental), self-reflection and metacognition, lateral thinking skills, value judgement skills, risk management and personal well-being, and refined the learning vehicle even further by laterally incorporating some of the most cutting-edge practice and research available. 

DUCKS students attending Forest School sessions are given total agency in deciding what it is they would like to do. The Forest School Faculty discreetly cultivate the fundamental skills sets previously mentioned through a mix of coaching interactions and subtle manipulation of environmental variables. This occurs both prior to and during the student’s engagement with their own self-identified and genuine fascinations.  

Each year group has a specific vertically articulated coaching conversation focus on the Forest School skills ladder, with the goal of empowering students and building the intellectual foundations required to become voracious learners, strong leaders, and empathetic human beings: 

Toddlers – Personal Safety in Exploration 

Nursery – Morality of Environmental Stewardship 

Reception – Ethics of Enquiry 

Year 1 – Risk Ownership and Mitigation 

Year 2 – Personal Tenacity and Interpersonal Effectiveness 

The learning that takes place is naturally aligned with Dulwich’s Early Years Curriculum, giving a rich and tapestried experience for each individual that is both highly relevant and deeply memorable.  

One of the other major benefits of Forest School is the way in which it enables students to consciously attend to their mental health, furnishing them over time with a broad canvas of experiences and the vivid colours of strategies to paint their own vision of personal mental health. Richard Louv’s exploration into Nature-Deficit Disorder ‘Last Child in the Woods’ (Louv 2008) identifies the First World’s dislocation from our natural environment as one of the major underlying and unattended-to causes of depression and maladaptive coping strategies in children under 18.  

By allowing students the time to authentically engage with the nature of their home we empower them with strategies that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. 

Innovations that we are pioneering 

Embracing our rich heritage of pioneering spirit here at Dulwich, we have been hard at work pushing Forest School pedagogy forward. A large part of this has been through the incorporation of innovative cutting-edge Compassionate Systems Framework mental architecture, coupled with a curated selection of regenerative landscape management and carbon sequestration strategies from the fields of Permaculture, Syntropic Agriculture and Regenerative Agriculture. 

Compassionate Systems Framework is a vehicle for the systematic consideration of the totality of an issue. This consideration is at both the intellectual and the personal levels, articulated through the use of Systems Thinking Tools and mindfulness strategies. This leads into deciding how you will act in a reasoned and compassionate fashion to affect positive change. This is a world first, offering children as young as two the opportunity to engage authentically with Systems Thinking Tools and mobilise their Compassionate Integrity. 

The incorporation of aspects of Permaculture, Syntropic Agriculture and Regenerative Agriculture into our Forest School learning has been brought about by the need to provide apolitical skills sets to support the stewardship of our biosphere. The Permaculture Research Institute provides us with a succinct synopsis of what ‘Permaculture’ refers to -  

“Permaculture integrates land, resources, people and the environment through mutually beneficial synergies – imitating the no waste, closed loop systems seen in diverse natural systems. Permaculture studies and applies holistic solutions that are applicable in rural and urban contexts at any scale. It is a multidisciplinary toolbox including agriculture, water harvesting and hydrology, energy, natural building, forestry, waste management, animal systems, aquaculture, appropriate technology, economics, and community development.” 

(Permaculture Research Institute n.d.)  

The tenets of Compassionate Systems and Permaculture integrate flawlessly with traditional Forest School pedagogy, equipping our students with mental architecture that enables them to engage with ‘big’ issues without becoming overwhelmed. It is scalable thinking that can be laterally applied to almost any aspect of life. It is literally Living WorldWise.

References:

Louv, R. 2008, The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, New York

Permaculture Research Institute n.d. What is permaculture? Permaculture News.org, accessed on 03/11/2023, https://www.permaculturenews.org/what-is-permaculture/