ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the evolvement – roots and changes – of outdoor studies involving nature encounters and their possible implications for environmental concern. It focuses on the subtleties of environmental concern with the aid of an environmentally historic model of how care for nature and environmental protection has gradually developed over the last century. The chapter provides a brief overview of the development of nature as fosterer in general. It focuses on the role of outdoor studies within environmental education and suggests potentials of outdoor education as an environmental pedagogy. One way of acquiring a deeper understanding of the different social perspectives of environmental issues with regard to what being 'environmentally concerned' means is to give a brief environmentally historic review of today's urbanised industrial societies. At the beginning of the 1970s outdoor education became a more obvious part of the developing environmental education.
