It is well known that bringing nature into the curriculum has many positive impacts on children and their school communities. Our project, Sustainable Designs for Living and Learning, weaves nature into the fabric of learning and integrates principles of permaculture design as a holistic approach to learners’ growing knowledge of the world.
Drawing on this general vision of our project, on April 25, 2026, Kirsten Irvine and Jack Field, two teachers from West Primary School, led a pilot project and shared findings from their work with Primary 1 and Primary 6 classes. Their poster was introduced as part of the Research making a difference in the classroom: BERA Teacher Conference – an event which aimed to highlight the importance and innovative work emerging from teacher-researcher partnerships. The conference event brought together a wide group of practitioners and education stakeholders interested in learning from each other’s work. Other projects featured focused on a wide range of topics such as the growing impact of AI, using VR Digital Content Creation, work life experiences of black female teaching assistants, metacognition in the English secondary classrooms, and working in rural areas.
Our team from the SDLL project shared the experiences of their classes where being with nature had significant impact on children’s wellbeing, their collaborative skills, and language learning which all led to increased attainment. Kirsten and Jack used “vertical learning” as a way to encourage deeper engagement with knowledge among younger and older children. Activities such as den building were enriched with words shared by learners of different linguistic backgrounds. Being outdoors also meant that some children had opportunities for the first time to touch and play with soil in intentional ways. This pilot project was grounded in the three permaculture principles of earth care, fair share and people care which shift teachers’ investment from children’s behaviour to activities that enable pupils to be seen, listened to and valued for everything that they have to contribute to their environments. This is the beginning of work that heals, of a pedagogy that cares for the whole child, and the development of a teacher sensitivity towards holistic learning. You can access the team’s poster on the project Resources page.
Photo by Gustav Gullstrand on Unsplash