GA Study Tour 2025 Costa Rica

General

24 October 2025

Read time: 5mins

‘I suddenly saw how significant it was that teachers were giving up their own holidays to lead by example.’

Amy Case

Why teachers need fieldwork too

Teachers spend years inspiring young people to explore the world but how often do they get to do it themselves?

Each year, Flooglebinder works with the Geographical Association to lead a professional study tour for educators. We share a belief that teachers need fieldwork too. Earlier this year in my conference session entitled ‘Do We Know Our Place?’ I asked delegates to reflect on how comfortable we are teaching about places.

To teach geography with authenticity, teachers need to feel the subject, to ask questions in the field, experience unfamiliar environments, and connect with the people and processes shaping them.

Our 2025 journey to Costa Rica was a unique chance to do exactly that and invited teachers to experience geographical fieldwork for teachers in action, to see what sustainable, purposeful travel can look like, and how it can feed directly back into the curriculum.

From cityscapes to cloud forests

Ten geography, humanities and environmental educators took part in the trip. These were teachers who wanted to refresh their practice and reconnect with others who believe in the power of geography as a lived, experienced subject.

We began in San José, exploring migration, inequality, and urban resilience in a rapidly developing Latin American context. From there, we travelled to Monteverde, rising through shifting biomes to the mist of the cloud forest.

Here, geographical fieldwork for teachers became sensory. We zip-lined above the canopy, tracing vertical zonation from rainforest floor to emergent layer. We visited a coffee farm in Monteverde, where the scent of roasting beans filled the air as we learned how geography, from soil to slope, shapes every cup.

On a night walk we encountered tarantulas, sleeping birds, and phosphorescent fungi, reminders of the hidden life that thrives when we stop to observe.

The Osa Peninsula: Immersion in a living laboratory

Our journey south took us via Marino Ballena National Park, where tectonics, tourism, and conservation intersect visibly along the Pacific coast. The final destination was the Osa Peninsula, one of the most dense biodiverse regions on Earth.

Here, we stayed at the Osa Research Station, working alongside conservationists, scientists, and educators. It was an intense and inspiring few days where teachers joined CPD sessions on:

bird monitoring and biodiversity data collection
sea turtle conservation and night patrols
regenerative farming and food systems (all of our meals came from this farm while in camp)
movement ecology and apex predator monitoring
nature scaping around the Bio Station, planting fruit trees for wildlife to improve human-animal coexistence at the buffer zone of the research station and rainforest.

Each activity modelled the enquiry approach that underpins geography teaching: observation, data collection, analysis, and reflection. Teachers discussed how to adapt these techniques for school fieldwork, from coastal studies to local biodiversity mapping.

One of the most powerful moments came during a community beach clean, collecting and recording waste that might otherwise have drifted toward the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The data became a living case study of global interconnection, showing ocean currents, consumption, and citizenship in action.

On a personal level, it was a real ‘pinch me’ moment. Having spent years in classrooms encouraging young people to take climate action, I suddenly saw how significant it was that teachers were giving up their own holidays to lead by example. In many ways the project was also a kind of holiday, but it was far from easy work.

The Research Centre had initially thought it an unrealistic task, which was understandable given how often conservation work involves doing a lot with very little. Yet together we managed it, and what stayed with me was not the data itself, but the sense of shared purpose, the feeling that we had each carried a small part of a much larger weight.

Sharing with the geography community

For the GA, professional networks are more than social spaces. They are living systems of shared values and practice. Study tours like this help strengthen that network. Teachers learn as much from each other as from the places they visit.

Many teachers will never have the chance to travel to Costa Rica, so we look for ways to share what we learn. Teachers are already creating resources and ideas on how to teach sustainability without moralising, how to connect local and global scales, and how to inspire curiosity in an age of climate anxiety. Seeing these issues first-hand in a country known for reforestation and respect for nature gave them real depth. Teachers returned with new ideas, energy, and motivation to help students see the world as a system of connected places.

I want to mention the great work of Jema Kinsman and Harriet Moss. Inspired by our citizen science workshop in the Osa, they have started The Shire Project. It brings together schools across Northamptonshire to explore local environments and collect biodiversity data. It shows how ideas from the rainforest can take root at home. Flooglebinder is proud to support and further their work by leading the project to grow nationwide.

Looking ahead: The Carpathian Mountains, 2026

Our next Study Tour takes us closer to home, but no less deep into place. It also responds to a growing wish among teachers to travel differently, to choose journeys that are lower-carbon, more inclusive, and more consistent with how we teach about sustainability in the classroom.

In July 2026, teachers are invited to join a rail-based CPD journey to the Carpathian Mountains. Travelling entirely by train, the route begins in London and continues through Vienna and Brașov, before time at a remote wilderness camp in the Carpathians, returning via Munich.

This study tour blends urban and rural fieldwork. Participants will explore:

sustainable transport systems and city planning in Vienna and Munich
cultural landscapes and heritage in Brașov
forest ecology, wildlife observation, and field techniques in the Carpathians
a mini-conference, teach-meet style, held at a unique and inspiring education centre.

This programme invites teachers to experience geography as it should be, out in the field, asking questions, observing change and making connections. Tracking bison, bears, wolves and lynx offers a rare chance to read the landscape through its living patterns.

Camping in the mountains brings the realities of climate, weather and resilience to life. Using tools such as drones, camera traps and eDNA, participants will gather and interpret data that reveal how ecosystems work and recover. Alongside this, time is set aside to reflect on how these experiences can inspire richer teaching, from everyday lessons to more engaging and imaginative NEAs. It is a week to think, explore and rediscover the wonder that first drew us to geography.

A shared commitment to purposeful geography

Flooglebinder’s partnership with the GA is grounded in a shared aim, to make travel an act of learning, not consumption. Each study tour is designed to deepen place knowledge, promote sustainability, and build the confidence teachers need to bring geography alive in their classrooms.

As one participant put it, ‘The fieldwork in Osa reminded me what geography feels like, the uncertainty, the observation, the questioning. I’ve brought that spirit back into my classroom, where we now approach every topic as a puzzle to explore, not a list to learn.’

In the end, that’s what geographical fieldwork for teachers is all about, seeing, questioning, and connecting in ways that remind us that the world remains the best classroom of all.

A special thanks from the team at Flooglebinder to Catherine Owen, whose years as Chair of ISIG have been central to the success and integrity of these tours.

For more information or to register interest in the 2026 tour to The Carpathian Mountains, please contact amy@flooglebinder.co.uk.