“I'd Love to Work in a School That Did Something Like This”: The Development of Pre‐Service Teacher Professionalism Through Outdoor Learning in Forest School Contexts

ABSTRACT

Forest school programmes are increasingly embedded in educational contexts, and pre‐service teachers may often find themselves facilitating such sessions somewhat by happenstance. This paper offers a posthumanist narrative account of a walking conversation with two final‐year trainee teachers around a forest school site, exploring what meanings emerge when pre‐service teachers encounter forest school during their placement, and what a materially attentive reading of that encounter might offer to our understanding of early‐career professional identity formation. Drawing on Barad's diffractive methodology and Ingold's concept of wayfaring, the paper moves between theory, narrative and place, enacting in its structure the posthumanist framework it inhabits. The forest school space emerges as a powerful site of professional becoming. The paper contributes to growing European and international interest in nature‐based learning and teacher development, suggesting forest school offers a generative encounter with a different kind of professional formation.