Date of Award
Summer 2025
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Languages, Literatures and Cultures
First Advisor
Yang Wang
Abstract
This qualitative action research study examines how teens respond to literacy lessons taking place outdoors in a wooded setting. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of outdoor lessons on students’ writing practices, their beliefs about writing and their writers’ identities, and their attitudes toward the natural world. The study features responses from 26 high school students enrolled in standard English language arts (ELA) classes and whose literacy abilities have been labeled in deficit terms because of past failures to meet standardized benchmarks of performance and behavior. Participants took part in nine outdoor lessons that each followed the same format: a shared reading of a piece of literary text; an artifact prompt, which asked students to complete a physical task in the wooded setting; and an open-ended writing prompt that allowed for creative responses in multimodal and multigenre formats. Findings revealed that students’ writing practices expanded while outside, with special growth in students’ storytelling skills, imaginative writing, and conscious rhetorical choices. Student responses also indicated growing affective connections to the natural world. Examined through the lens of embodied literacies and artifactual literacies, and informed by research from outdoor education scholars, the study shows the potential for the development of outdoor classrooms that are conducive to authentic writing experiences through sensory engagement, especially for marginalized populations, while also serving to counter the negative effects of an overly standardized ELA curriculum. Findings also point to the value of carefully selected mentor texts; the inclusion of literary texts in the secondary ELA classroom; and freedom to move and talk while creating.
Rights
© 2025, Kristie Clawson Camp
Recommended Citation
Camp, K. C.(2025). Naturally Creative: A Qualitative Study of Adolescent Literacy in an Outdoor Classroom. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/8378