Teaching styles and outdoor education to promote non-linear learning

Introduction. Motor activities carried out in outdoor education contexts contribute to the prevention of noncommunicable diseases, promote the increase in levels of physical activity and the learning of motor competencies; moreover, they are significant opportunities for the emotional and social development of children and the transferability of learning in various disciplinary fields.The motor activities carried out in outdoor education promote motor competencies through the contextualized links among motor skills-abilities, knowledge and attitudes of the person, and non-linear, reticular learning methods in which students can independently modify and adapt motor responses in relation to the perception-action-environment relationships. Production teaching styles, oriented towards guided discovery and problem solving, enhance the unusual, creative and personalized motor responses, promote the learning process of each student and constitute mediation factors for the educational process, furthering the interconnections between motor, cognitive, emotional and social functions. Objective. The objective of the contribution is to analyse the interactions between non-linear learning processes and teaching styles, in order to highlight the student-task-environment relationships, through guided discovery and problem solving.The teaching styles favour the connections between the contents and the different ways of learning; the production styles solicit original, creative and transferable motor skills, generating various matrices for subsequent learning. Current didactic research should proceed in two different and complementary directions: the selection and testing of motor tasks, organizational methods and equipment, and the application of teaching styles and strategies which foster the dynamic interaction between teacher-motor task-pupil-context, functional to the learning and development of motor competencies.