Wellbeing of outdoor education teachers: the role of school management and organization

The following research begins with an increase in the perception of malaise within schools, as evidenced by increased cases of work-related stress and burnout syndrome among teachers. The Covid-19 pandemic and restriction measures reduced people's interactions with their natural environments, making the needs of nature even more urgent than before. The 2030 Agenda objectives point to the need to reduce this gap, especially in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (UNESCO, 2017). The scientific literature attributes great potential to natural environments in terms of well-being and learning. Therefore, it is fundamental that schools pay more attention to well-being (physical, mental, emotional, social) to counteract the frenzy of teaching-learning rhythms, the static nature of educational proposals, and the social immobility to which children and adults have been exposed during lockdown periods. With this in mind, we chose to investigate the association between Outdoor Education experience, perception of school climate and organization, and teachers' levels of stress, anxiety, and psychophysical fatigue. The following instruments were used: Depression Anxiety Stress Scales - DASS 21 (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); Positivity - P-scale (Caprara et al., 2012); Need for Recovery - NFR (Van Veldhoven & Meijman, 1994) and, for school context assessment, the Revised School Level Environment Questionnaire (Matteucci, Guglielmi & Lauermann, 2017). A convenience sample of 123 Italian teachers aged between 24 and 63, 96% of whom were females answered to the anonymous survey. The sample was composed of two different study groups: 74 outdoor teachers and 49 indoor teachers. The data analysis would seem to exclude the direct effect of Outdoor Education on the perception of stress, anxiety, depression, and work-related fatigue. On the other hand, the importance of school climate and organizational characteristics emerges. The practice of OE is statistically significantly associated with better levels of psychophysical well-being of teachers when their school is characterized by sharing responsibilities, cohesion, openness to innovation, and availability of resources.