The use of outdoor environments in school-based physical education: a scoping review

Physical education (PE) is a compulsory school subject with responsibility for promoting physical activity, learning, and broader educational aims, including wellbeing and sustainability. Outdoor environments are increasingly recognized as pedagogically valuable settings for PE, but research on outdoor PE is dispersed across multiple traditions and lacks a consolidated overview.

This scoping review aimed to map the extent, nature, and characteristics of empirical research examining the use of outdoor environments in compulsory school-based PE.

The review followed Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodological guidance and was reported in accordance with PRISMA-ScR. Peer-reviewed empirical studies published in Scopus or EBSCO from 2005 onwards in English, French, or Norwegian were eligible if they investigated outdoor environments as a central component of school-based PE.

Forty-one studies published between 2005 and 2025 were included. Research was geographically concentrated in Western Europe and the United States and primarily focused on primary and lower secondary pupils. Four outcome domains were identified: physical; psychological/emotional; social/behavioral; and environmental. Pedagogical purposes ranged from promoting physical activity and fitness to supporting experimental learning, social development, safety competence, and environmental education. Activities included fitness and games, orienteering and navigation-based tasks, cycling, adventure challenges, plogging, and blue-space activities. Outdoor environments comprised school grounds, parks and forests, beaches, and blue-space settings.

The literature on outdoor PE has expanded but remains uneven in scope and focus, privileging physical outcomes over pedagogical processes and sustainability-related learning. Future research should enhance conceptual clarity, address under-represented age groups and contexts, and more explicitly examine pedagogical mechanisms alongside health, learning, and environmental outcomes.