The Effects of Outdoor Teaching on Academic Achievement and Its Associated Factors—A Scoping Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for letting me read your thorough and well written research paper. I have read the paper in ligth of the PRISMA framework and the Critical Appraisal Skills programme (CASP), and will comment your work according to these. 

The scoping review adress a clearly focused research question, that indeed is relevant for the field.

The introduction is lively, interesting and take into account the history og outdoor teaching in a well written manner, I really enjoyed reading this part.

The english used is also very good.

I also enjoyed the accurate and transperent method and discussion, and the Figure 1 (prisma diagram) clearly shows the steps you have taken. So the methodology is clearly descibed and follow the outlines for (scoping) reviews.

The discussion does also in a sufficient academic and cautious way describe the research that could be done following the conclusions in the article - that - as follows - I consider is to week.

So- I am very sorry but I have a major critical point concerning the alignment between your research question and the keywords used. This is item 2 and 3 in the CASP programme: 'did the authors look for the rigth type of papers' and 'do you think all the important, relevant studies were included'?

As you write yourself, there are many different ways to describe 'regular classes in outdoor education', and I know that you have to choose some keywords. The cited paper by Becker et al. uses  “outdoor education”, “outdoor learning”, “outdoor teaching”, “learning outside the classroom”, “out-of-classroom”, “experiential learning”, “expeditionary learning”, “udeskole”, “uteskole”, “friluftsliv”, “forest school”, “nature school”, “environmental education”, “place-based education”, “Draußenschule”, and “Draussenschule”. This huge list migth not be in your interest (e.g. friluftsliv' does not have to be schoolbased), but as you are adressing your research as a 'scoping review' I would expect a more comprehensive search strategy. As the last search was done in 2024, I would highly recommend also to include the the EOtC (Education Outside the Classroom) term, as it has become more and more common and published papers on pre/quasi and experimental studies does exist. By leaving out this expression / wording in your search, you are missing important research papers and by doing this you do not fully cover the field.

This migth also get you in contact with important research papers from 2018-2014, that is missing in your current search (in the 'result' section you write that the included articles all are form 2001-2018, that is - all is from before COVID?).

As your work could be of wide interest and be used both by fellow researchers and policy makers, the 'current state of knowledge about this form of teaching (outdoor teaching) on academic achievement' must be more correct and including all (or at least more) papers.

Please se this as an friendly advice to make your paper even more important.

 

Other small comments:

Please check for spelling mistakes naming authors (e.g. Dettweiler, Gustafsson)

Please check your litterature list, as some references are missing ( e.g. Mying 2017) and some needs proofreading (e.g. Brill.Martin, ).

Please check for extra spaces in the text on page 16

 

 

 

Author Response

We'd like to thank you sincerely for your comments, which have enabled us to improve the article considerably. 

Comment 1 : 

So- I am very sorry but I have a major critical point concerning the alignment between your research question and the keywords used. This is item 2 and 3 in the CASP programme: 'did the authors look for the rigth type of papers' and 'do you think all the important, relevant studies were included'?

As you write yourself, there are many different ways to describe 'regular classes in outdoor education', and I know that you have to choose some keywords. The cited paper by Becker et al. uses  “outdoor education”, “outdoor learning”, “outdoor teaching”, “learning outside the classroom”, “out-of-classroom”, “experiential learning”, “expeditionary learning”, “udeskole”, “uteskole”, “friluftsliv”, “forest school”, “nature school”, “environmental education”, “place-based education”, “Draußenschule”, and “Draussenschule”. This huge list migth not be in your interest (e.g. friluftsliv' does not have to be schoolbased), but as you are adressing your research as a 'scoping review' I would expect a more comprehensive search strategy. As the last search was done in 2024, I would highly recommend also to include the the EOtC (Education Outside the Classroom) term, as it has become more and more common and published papers on pre/quasi and experimental studies does exist. By leaving out this expression / wording in your search, you are missing important research papers and by doing this you do not fully cover the field.

This migth also get you in contact with important research papers from 2018-2014, that is missing in your current search (in the 'result' section you write that the included articles all are form 2001-2018, that is - all is from before COVID?).

 

Response 1

Thank you for your suggestion. As you suggest, we have taken the list of terms used by Becker. We have selected from these terms those which we had not used and which were school-based: “outdoor learning” “outdoor teaching” “learning outside the classroom” “out of classroom” “education outside the classroom”. In addition, your comment made us realize that we may have used keywords that were too restrictive for outcomes. To avoid missing out on studies, we decided to include “experimental” in the keywords, so as to have access to all studies including mixed and pre-/quasi-experimental. These additions resulted in 21 articles being added to the scoping review (following the screening of 1917 additional articles), 17 of which were published after 2018. 

 

Comment 2

Please check for spelling mistakes naming authors (e.g. Dettweiler, Gustafsson)

response 2 

we carefully checked all the manuscript

Comment 3

Please check your litterature list, as some references are missing ( e.g. Mying 2017) and some needs proofreading (e.g. Brill.Martin, )

Response 3 :

We checked the list. 

 

Comment 4: Please check for extra spaces in the text on page 16

The extra spaces are no longer there. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for providing this report and giving me the opportunity to comment on it. You have chosen to review some very interesting papers, and most of the report is well written and understandable. However, from my point of view, I do not understand why you avoided to limit the search criteria to your very reasonable conclusion in the discussion: The field is so complex that a few quantitative studies alone will not cover the complexity of outdoor education and their academic achievements in the wide sense that you propose. I would suggest narrowing down the search criteria to mixed methods studies, but not using the current AND criteria, which seem not to be universally shared as keywords by authors writing about the teaching and learning in outdoor education and therefore potentially exclude many studies. Then, your review will be a fascinating and focused new contribution to the wealth of reviews, circling around widely the same research interest among us all and most previous reviews.

I hope, my distinct comments below throughout the manuscript will further clarify the above concern, and support your further work with this manuscript.

Introduction

1. Overarching comment: It remains unclear what is new in this review, compared to earlier reviews. Also, what does the limitation to “teaching” imply, if the manuscript addresses both teaching and learning, as most other reviews do? Also, in its current form, the manuscript does not clearly discern itself from previous reviews yielding the same overall results, just with slightly different use of terms such as outdoor education, education out of the classroom, place-based education and so forth.

 

2. First paragraph, please provide literature to the claims connected to Covid.
3. Line 47: I agree on this sentence:

Much has been written about outdoor teaching today, using a variety of designations, 47

which can make navigating the terminology complex.

• It is complex indeed, table 1 only shows a little part of the complexity and does not clarify or operationalize the term outdoor teaching, which this paper uses in comparison to other established terms. See e.g. Waite, S., Bølling, M., & Bentsen, P. (2016). Comparing apples and pears?: a conceptual framework for understanding forms of outdoor learning through comparison of English Forest Schools and Danish udeskole. Environmental education research, 22(6), 868-892.
• The wording in the table confuses me more, than helps to see differences, see foe example forest school vs udeskole à udeskole is so much more then just in forests, see literature above. Similarly, the other terms and examples should be thoroughly discussed and discerned from each other/overlapping aspects. For example Udeskole would be applicable to all three categories, if these are restricted to school-curricula, as being an exclusions criterion in the review afterwards. This has consequences for the categorization in the whole paper.

4. Introduction in total: There are a lot more reviews to the topic at hand, which this review aims to build further on? This connection lacks in the introduction.
5. For instance Dillon et al., who posed similar questions Dillon, J., Rickinson, M., & Teamey, K. (2016). The value of outdoor learning: evidence from research in the UK and elsewhere. In Towards a convergence between science and environmental education (pp. 193-200). Routledge.
6. Even in MDPI https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1199 WHile https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/5/485 is cited, how does this review give better results than the ones known before?
7. In the next chapter, methods, a framework is cited. This should be presented more clearly in the introduction.
8. Academic achievements + connected factors is a very broad definition, and seems to cover essentially everything.

Materials and methods

1. Your RQ: At which grade levels is knowledge 127 available about the effects of outdoor teaching on academic achievement and its associ- 128 ated factor? About what kinds of outdoor teaching do we have knowledge about their 129 effects on academic achievement and its associated factors and what are these effects?
2. This is very wide and comprises the whole field of outdoor education!
3. Line 138?
4. Why these databases: Academic Search Com- 140plete, Education Source and ERIC and not others?
5. Inclusion criteria: How does the AND restriction cover everything that is inside the definition of academic achievement, especially given the myriad of specific wording related to both outdoor education AND achievement? It is very specific and will probably have excluded very many studies.
6. How do you avoid the problem posed by Rickinson and others previously.: There are so many reviews, that the same basic papers have been included in several reviews!?

Results

1. High quality papers have been chosen, but the underlying problems outlined above continue. The focus is so wide, that it is difficult to gain new insights of a small number of 20 papers in a global field.

Discussion

1. “In studies from this category, disciplinary acquisitions concern 275 the sciences. If this leads to the conclusion that outdoor teaching is an effective way to 276 teach sciences, it also begs the question of its pertinence in other disciplines”

• There is a bias in this conclusion, as one of the seaerch criteria was outdoor science, but not other distinct school subjects!

2. It lacks a critical discussion of the claims posed in the discussion that for instance outdoor teaching in geography lacks. This is only due to the chosen exclusion criteria, and a lack of reflection about the sole focus on quantitative studies.
3. Line 315, “date 2” in the anonymized form it remains unclear what these ideas are, it should be written explicitly.
4. Line 326 is very interesting!! I would support this notion. The consequences, however, are that the review itself has to operationalize this criterion! The trustworthiness and novelty of this review will improve significantly, if a limiting search criterion is mixed methods, instead of the diffused AND-criteria used currently.

Conclusion

The conclusion is in line with previous reviews and as such convincing, but again, it is based on such a small part of the global literature in this research domain, and does not provide evidence for not reusing previously reviewed literature, that general claims are problematic in the current form.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Easy to read. Only a few language mistakes, but the author names, cited in the text are partially wrong.

Author Response

We'd like to thank you sincerely for your comments, which have enabled us to improve the article considerably. 

Comment 1 :You have chosen to review some very interesting papers, and most of the report is well written and understandable. However, from my point of view, I do not understand why you avoided to limit the search criteria to your very reasonable conclusion in the discussion: The field is so complex that a few quantitative studies alone will not cover the complexity of outdoor education and their academic achievements in the wide sense that you propose. I would suggest narrowing down the search criteria to mixed methods studies, but not using the current AND criteria, which seem not to be universally shared as keywords by authors writing about the teaching and learning in outdoor education and therefore potentially exclude many studies. Then, your review will be a fascinating and focused new contribution to the wealth of reviews, circling around widely the same research interest among us all and most previous reviews.

Response 1 : Thank you very much for your comment. It made us realize that we were missing out on a lot of interesting studies. We tried to remove the AND restrictors, but the queries were mostly bringing back out-of-scope studies. We did, however, come up with a winning strategy for finding more studies. It took the form of two actions. 1) we broadened the queries concerning the denominations of outdoor education (adding “outdoor teaching” “outdoor learning” “education outside the classroom” “out of classroom” “learning outside the classroom” and “education outside the classroom”. 2) we looked for broader keywords to place after the AND restricter. We chose “experimental” because it brought back mixed methodology, pre- and quasi-experimental study and experimental study, which matched our expectations. We then selected the relevant studies, classifying them according to whether the outcomes studied were related to academic achievement or asscoiated factors. As in the previous version, we started with the associated factors identified in the introductory section of the article. For those that were not identified, we looked for the existence of writings that gave them the status of predictor, moderator or mediator of academic achievement in other studies, and retained them on this condition alone. 

Comment 2 : It remains unclear what is new in this review, compared to earlier reviews. Also, what does the limitation to “teaching” imply, if the manuscript addresses both teaching and learning, as most other reviews do? Also, in its current form, the manuscript does not clearly discern itself from previous reviews yielding the same overall results, just with slightly different use of terms such as outdoor education, education out of the classroom, place-based education and so forth.

Response 2: Thank you for your comment. line 82 et seq., and lines 107 et seq., we've clarified our idea. Few studies distinguish between outdoor education interventions carried out of school or in school  by a professionnal of outdoor education with intervention carried out in schools by teachers and those carried out by teachers themselves.We focus on outdoor teaching because we believe that the school context has specific features that could influence the impact of outdoor education: the teachers are professionals in the field of education, but not necessarily in the outdoors, the content to be learned is determined by programs, the organization of time is specific, the number of children and their ages are determined without regard for the outdoors, etc.. 

Comment 4: First paragraph, please provide literature to the claims connected to Covid.

Response 4 : The reference is added

Comment 5 : 

Line 47: I agree on this sentence:
Much has been written about outdoor teaching today, using a variety of designations, 47

which can make navigating the terminology complex.

It is complex indeed, table 1 only shows a little part of the complexity and does not clarify or operationalize the term outdoor teaching, which this paper uses in comparison to other established terms. See e.g. Waite, S., Bølling, M., & Bentsen, P. (2016). Comparing apples and pears?: a conceptual framework for understanding forms of outdoor learning through comparison of English Forest Schools and Danish udeskole. Environmental education research, 22(6), 868-892.
The wording in the table confuses me more, than helps to see differences, see foe example forest school vs udeskole à udeskole is so much more then just in forests, see literature above. Similarly, the other terms and examples should be thoroughly discussed and discerned from each other/overlapping aspects. For example Udeskole would be applicable to all three categories, if these are restricted to school-curricula, as being an exclusions criterion in the review afterwards. This has consequences for the categorization in the whole paper.

Response 5: Thank you for your comment. We add precisions in table 1 and additional informations l52 et seq. Like you, we're aware that the various designations presented are far richer than can be summed up in a few lines. Nevertheless, we believe that each of the proposed categories reflects an overriding value, sin equae non of the examples given: Without the idea of surpassing oneself, one is not experience oriented. If you don't aim to learn, you're not acquisistion oriented, and if you don't bring pupils in natural environment, you're not place oriented. We believe that this distinction may be useful for teachers wishing to read about outdoor education, because in our experience and work, some go there above all to make people learn better, others to connect with nature above all, and others above all to make students surpass themselves.  addition, your comments have led us to read more about udeskole and we have reconsidered the place of this device in the table. Thank you for your feedback.  

Comment 6: Introduction in total: There are a lot more reviews to the topic at hand, which this review aims to build further on? This connection lacks in the introduction.
For instance Dillon et al., who posed similar questions Dillon, J., Rickinson, M., & Teamey, K. (2016). The value of outdoor learning: evidence from research in the UK and elsewhere. In Towards a convergence between science and environmental education (pp. 193-200). Routledge.
Even in MDPI https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1199 WHile https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/5/485 is cited, how does this review give better results than the ones known before?
In the next chapter, methods, a framework is cited. This should be presented more clearly in the introduction.

Response 6: Clarifications have been made throughout the introduction, in particular line 107 et seq). All the review evoked are mentionned at this place, except Becker et al. (2017) which is presenting in details line 93 et seq. 

Comment 7: Academic achievements + connected factors is a very broad definition, and seems to cover essentially everything.

Response 7: We have specified the criteria used (line 121 and seq) to define the factors associated with academic achievement, and the approach used to retain them when they are not mentioned in the research framework is specified (l203 and seq). We believe that these criteria are relevant, as they enabled us to exclude a number of studies whose outcomes did not appear to be related to the literature (for example, a lot of variables in link with health). 

Comment 8 : Your RQ: At which grade levels is knowledge  available about the effects of outdoor teaching on academic achievement and its associated factor? About what kinds of outdoor teaching do we have knowledge about their effects on academic achievement and its associated factors and what are these effects? This is very wide and comprises the whole field of outdoor education!

Response 8: We agree that it's pretty broad, but not that it encompasses the whole field of outdoor education. Many articles in outdoor education focus on interventions outside the school context or carried out by non-teachers. Focusing on outdoor teaching greatly restricts the types of intervention we want to capture. Moreover, many outdoor education studies focus on variables that have nothing to do with academic achievement and their associated factors. 

Comment 9: Why these databases: Academic Search Complete, Education Source and ERIC and not others?

Response 9: These are the databases available in our institution and highly relevant for the field. We add this precision on the paper

Comment 10: Inclusion criteria: How does the AND restriction cover everything that is inside the definition of academic achievement, especially given the myriad of specific wording related to both outdoor education AND achievement? It is very specific and will probably have excluded very many studies.

Response 10: Thanks for the comment. As mentioned in a previous comment, we expanded our query system to cover more terms used to talk about outdoor education and to bring back more articles on acadeic achievements. These articles were then sorted to select those that were relevant to our subject. 21 articles were added. 

Comment 11: How do you avoid the problem posed by Rickinson and others previously.: There are so many reviews, that the same basic papers have been included in several reviews!?

Response 11: We did not considere the reviews or metaanalysis. So, a given results is considered just one time in this scoping review. 

Comment 12: High quality papers have been chosen, but the underlying problems outlined above continue. The focus is so wide, that it is difficult to gain new insights of a small number of 20 papers in a global field. 

Response 12: In this new version, we added 21 papers for a total of 41 papers. Add to this the fact that the last school context reviews were carried out almost 10 years ago, and we're optimistic that our article will provide new insights.

Comment 13: “In studies from this category, disciplinary acquisitions concern 275 the sciences. If this leads to the conclusion that outdoor teaching is an effective way to 276 teach sciences, it also begs the question of its pertinence in other disciplines”. There is a bias in this conclusion, as one of the seaerch criteria was outdoor science, but not other distinct school subjects!

Response 13: Thanks for the comment. We think that the strategy of adding a method-oriented query reduced this bias. In addition, we would like to point out that most of the science-related articles we identified were not brought back by the “outdoor science” query.

Comment 14: It lacks a critical discussion of the claims posed in the discussion that for instance outdoor teaching in geography lacks. This is only due to the chosen exclusion criteria, and a lack of reflection about the sole focus on quantitative studies.

Response 14: This mention has been removed, as the broadening of our queries has enabled us to find studies in these fields. We would like to add that, from the outset, we considered mixed studies and included them in the analysis. We chose to ignore purely qualitative studies because, despite their interest, they do not allow us to measure outcomes. 

Comment 15: Line 315, “date 2” in the anonymized form it remains unclear what these ideas are, it should be written explicitly.

Response 15: We add precision (now line367)

Comment 16: Line 326 is very interesting!! I would support this notion. The consequences, however, are that the review itself has to operationalize this criterion! The trustworthiness and novelty of this review will improve significantly, if a limiting search criterion is mixed methods, instead of the diffused AND-criteria used currently.

Response 16: This is what we think we've achieved by extending our criteria. We would like to mention here that we have tried to use "mixed method" as a criterion. The vast majority of studies returned did not have outcome measures. With “experimental”, queries returned mixed, quasi-experimental, pre-experimental and experimental articles (inluding the ones returened with "mixed method" query). Few were added to the articles analyzed, however, many were excluded either because they did not address teaching practices, or because their outcomes were different from those we were interested in. 

Comment 17: The conclusion is in line with previous reviews and as such convincing, but again, it is based on such a small part of the global literature in this research domain, and does not provide evidence for not reusing previously reviewed literature, that general claims are problematic in the current form.

Response 17: Thanks you for all your comments and suggestions. We hope that the modifications done convince of the value of this new review, which includes many articles published the last years. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an important and well-written paper that contributes valuable knowledge to the field of education. The rigorous application of appropriate inclusion criteria strengthens the credibility of this scoping review.

I appreciate the historical anchoring and contextualisation of the topic (lines 32-47). It is commendable that the authors know and recognise the field's historical background.

The authors follow a recognised strategy related to scoping reviews. The included studies do not have quality assessments. Yet, the research questions are pretty specific (lines  127-130): "At which grade levels is knowledge available about the effects of outdoor teaching on academic achievement and its associated factors? About what kinds of outdoor teaching do we have knowledge about their effects on academic achievement and its associated factors, and what are these effects?"

Two suggestions to the RQs:

1. The RQs are presented quite late in the manuscript (lines 127-130) under the heading 2. Materials and Methods. Consider providing the RQs at the end of the introduction.
2. The wording of (especially) RQ 2 should be considered and revised (see my suggestion under "Comments on the Quality of English Language")

According to the literature, the main difference between scoping and systematic reviews is their research questions. At the same time, a scoping review focuses on broad research questions to explore the breadth and depth of existing literature on a topic, providing a comprehensive understanding of the thematic field. In contrast, the research questions in a systematic review are narrow, striving for precise answers based, among other things, on an evidence assessment of each study. Thus, it is particularly the second clause in the second research question ("... , and what are these effects?") that, in the opinion of this reviewer, may elevate this review above (or somewhat "beyond") a scoping review. However, a change to a systematic review would entail considerable additional work, as it would also require a quality assessment of the articles included.

The concepts of outdoor teaching and outdoor learning are used rather implicitly (teaching: lines 10, 12, 15, 25, 32, 34, 47, 50, 53, 86, 95f, 102; learning: 10, 24, 39, 54). Whilst the core term "Academic achievement" is formally defined in lines 103-105, a formal definition of the concepts of outdoor teaching (independent variable) and learning (dependent variable) is lacking.

Since the introductory section is very compact, somewhat wordy and contains several references, clarifying and defining these two core terms would be beneficial. Using a diagram to illustrate the relationships between the core concepts of outdoor, teaching, learning, and associated factors might be helpful. To me, the authors' understanding of the role of the "associated factors" remains somewhat unclear: Are they prerequisites (causes), moderators, mediators, effects of outdoor teaching, or are they included as “everything”? Of course, they can be "everything", but how do the authors understand it in this article?

Line 138: Please follow up on the decontextualised sentence "No review protocol was recorded for this study."

Line 119: To the best of my knowledge, it should be "PRISMA guidelines" (not method)

Lines 102 and 125: I think the term "how" is not quite correct. In this scoping review, according to the RQs, the author should use "... research findings that indicate whether ..." The authors should consider using the terms "how" and "whether" regarding the study design. 

Lines 116-197: 2. Materials and Methods

I recommend that the authors reconsider the structure of this section. Personally, I would prefer the PRISMA diagram to appear earlier in the methodology section, or at least an introductory sentence stating that the PRISMA diagram appears at the end as a kind of summary overview. Furthermore, I would suggest that the subheadings be formulated in line with the Prisma diagram's “Identification of studies” and “Screening.”
A separate section on the credibility of the selection (identification) and screening process should be considered. This section could gather information about who did what and how bias was addressed to strengthen credibility.  

I find it difficult to understand why different inclusion/exclusion criteria are used in the identification process (lines 140-152) and in the section “Study selection” (lines 162 ff). In my opinion, the inclusion/exclusion criteria should be the same for all steps in the review process. I suggest the authors create an appendix where the entire search string is presented and present a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria that apply to the whole review. 

Lines 199-200:  The authors shouldn't denote the participants as "school children" when the age range is from kindergarten to college.

Table 2: The authors should reformat the text in the table, especially in the rows "Type interventions" and "Description of interventions." Cutting and pasting have obviously caused formatting errors.  

I have no further comments on the well-written sections on results, discussion, and conclusion. However, here, too, the question arises as to whether the findings actually “exceed” the purpose of a scoping review. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Some examples emphasising that proofreading would be beneficial (at least one round with Grammarly or similar): 

Line 60: "an improvement of motor skills" would be more appropriate than "increase"

The second research question could be formulated as follows: "What kinds of outdoor teaching do we know about their effects on academic achievement and its associated factors, and what are these effects?"

Lines 100-102, should be plural: "In the present article, we specifically interrogate the available research findings from 100 pre/quasi and experimental studies or mixed studies, including a pre/quasi-experimental component on how outdoor teaching can influence learning.

Lines 145, 151, 162-170, 180, 184, ...: The authors use the somewhat unusual term “text” instead of the more common term “paper.” Since they only include scientific articles, the term “articles” would also be appropriate.

Line 270-271: " ... that further studies at this level are necessary, ..."

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind review of our article and for your comments which helped us to improve it.

Comment 1 : The RQs are presented quite late in the manuscript (lines 127-130) under the heading 2. Materials and Methods. Consider providing the RQs at the end of the introduction.

Response 1: Thanks.  Further details are given in the last paragraph of the introduction now. 

Comment 2: The wording of (especially) RQ 2 should be considered and revised (see my suggestion under "Comments on the Quality of English Language")

Response 2: Thank you very much for your suggestion, which helped us to formulate things more clearly. We have reworded the two research questions as follows: RQ1: At which grade levels is knowledge available about the effects of outdoor teaching on academic achievement and its associated factor? RQ2 : What do we know about the effects of different forms of outdoor teaching on academic achievement and its associated factors ?

Comment 3: According to the literature, the main difference between scoping and systematic reviews is their research questions. At the same time, a scoping review focuses on broad research questions to explore the breadth and depth of existing literature on a topic, providing a comprehensive understanding of the thematic field. In contrast, the research questions in a systematic review are narrow, striving for precise answers based, among other things, on an evidence assessment of each study. Thus, it is particularly the second clause in the second research question ("... , and what are these effects?") that, in the opinion of this reviewer, may elevate this review above (or somewhat "beyond") a scoping review. However, a change to a systematic review would entail considerable additional work, as it would also require a quality assessment of the articles included.

Response 3: Thanks for the comment. We agree that this article goes a little beyond what is generally done in scoping reviews. We think that this is linked to the fact that our research questions invite us to identify the research findings of the studies reviewed. We felt it was important to organize these findings to make them easier to read. At the same time, we felt that this stage of the scoping review was necessary before embarking on a critical systematic analysis, as a systematic review would requir

Comment 4: The concepts of outdoor teaching and outdoor learning are used rather implicitly (teaching: lines 10, 12, 15, 25, 32, 34, 47, 50, 53, 86, 95f, 102; learning: 10, 24, 39, 54). Whilst the core term "Academic achievement" is formally defined in lines 103-105, a formal definition of the concepts of outdoor teaching (independent variable) and learning (dependent variable) is lacking.

Response 4: Thanks for the comments. We've added formal definitions at the very beginning of the introduction

Comment 5: Since the introductory section is very compact, somewhat wordy and contains several references, clarifying and defining these two core terms would be beneficial. Using a diagram to illustrate the relationships between the core concepts of outdoor, teaching, learning, and associated factors might be helpful. To me, the authors' understanding of the role of the "associated factors" remains somewhat unclear: Are they prerequisites (causes), moderators, mediators, effects of outdoor teaching, or are they included as “everything”? Of course, they can be "everything", but how do the authors understand it in this article?

Response 5: Thanks for the suggestions. You've clearly identified the three terms we wanted to encompass (without distinguishing between them at the stage of this scoping review) prerequisites, moderators and mediators. The end of the introduction has been modified to make the necessary clarifications, and we've added an illustrative figure, as you suggested. 

Comment 6: Line 138: Please follow up on the decontextualised sentence "No review protocol was recorded for this study."

Response 6: We wanted to indicate that the protocol had not been recorded, as suggested by Tricco et al. Following your comment, we decided to place this information at the end of the introductory paragraph of the methods section.

Comment 7: Line 119: To the best of my knowledge, it should be "PRISMA guidelines" (not method)

Response 7: Modification done. 

Comment 8 : Lines 102 and 125: I think the term "how" is not quite correct. In this scoping review, according to the RQs, the author should use "... research findings that indicate whether ..." The authors should consider using the terms "how" and "whether" regarding the study design. 

Response 8: Both have been modified according to your suggestions.  

Comment 9: I recommend that the authors reconsider the structure of this section. Personally, I would prefer the PRISMA diagram to appear earlier in the methodology section, or at least an introductory sentence stating that the PRISMA diagram appears at the end as a kind of summary overview. Furthermore, I would suggest that the subheadings be formulated in line with the Prisma diagram's “Identification of studies” and “Screening.”

Response 9: modification done

Comment 10: A separate section on the credibility of the selection (identification) and screening process should be considered. This section could gather information about who did what and how bias was addressed to strengthen credibility.  

Response 10: We add informations between line 170 and 202

Comment 11: I find it difficult to understand why different inclusion/exclusion criteria are used in the identification process (lines 140-152) and in the section “Study selection” (lines 162 ff). In my opinion, the inclusion/exclusion criteria should be the same for all steps in the review process. I suggest the authors create an appendix where the entire search string is presented and present a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria that apply to the whole review. 

Response 11: We added an appendix with all the queries used. We now present the inclusion exclusion criteria just one time. 

Comment 12: Lines 199-200:  The authors shouldn't denote the participants as "school children" when the age range is from kindergarten to college.

Response 12: We corrected. 

Comment 13: Table 2: The authors should reformat the text in the table, especially in the rows "Type interventions" and "Description of interventions." Cutting and pasting have obviously caused formatting errors.  

Response 13: We reformat all the text.

Comment 14: Line 60: "an improvement of motor skills" would be more appropriate than "increase"

Response: we corrected. 

Comment 15: The second research question could be formulated as follows: "What kinds of outdoor teaching do we know about their effects on academic achievement and its associated factors, and what are these effects?"

Response 15: we modified the second question

Comment 16: Lines 100-102, should be plural: "In the present article, we specifically interrogate the available research findings from 100 pre/quasi and experimental studies or mixed studies, including a pre/quasi-experimental component on how outdoor teaching can influence learning.

Response 16: correction done. 

Comment 17: Lines 145, 151, 162-170, 180, 184, ...: The authors use the somewhat unusual term “text” instead of the more common term “paper.” Since they only include scientific articles, the term “articles” would also be appropriate.

Response 17:  we made the corrections

Comment 18 : Line 270-271: " ... that further studies at this level are necessary, ..."

Response 18: correction done. 

Thanks again!

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

An exciting and timely paper. Congratulation.

Author Response

Thank you very much !