ABSTRACT
English outside Many English teachers will remember teaching a class outside on a hot day. Simply sitting together on the school field and sharing the reading of a novel can be an intensely pleasurable experience, although one that has become harder to justify on the grounds of lesson objectives, lesson structure and management concern about targets. However, there is support in recent curriculum documentation for justifying rather more formal opportunities for outdoor education (DfES 2006; Ofsted 2008). Fieldwork and opportunities to engage with issues of sustainability across all subjects are also promoted through the government’s ‘Sustainable Schools’ initiative (DfES 2008). This chapter will explore how English can integrate fieldwork as part of developing students’ ecocritical awareness of their environment and the connections of place to literary writing. There are three main focuses for fieldwork in English that relate to an ecocritical perspective: the study of literary writing about place; creative nature writing; and the study of nature writing as a distinct genre.
