Johanna Lakin

Thesis: Access To Person-Centred Education Forest Schools For Adults And The Impact On Human Flourishing

In the UK and globally emotional distress is increasingly common and has been exacerbated by a reduction in time outdoors and increased screen time (Khan et al., 2023). Additionally, qualities that contribute to human flourishing such as autonomy, resilience and a healthy relationship to fear are declining in adults. Mainstream comprehensive education largely neglects nurturing these qualities in favour of developing employability (Stevenson, 2025). This has contributed to a systemic challenge in working out effective and long-term support for emotional distress.

One emerging school of thought is to reimagine emotional distress outside of the healthcare medical model of diagnosis and instead utilise a person-centred educational discourse (Murphy & Joseph, 2018; Carr-Chellman et al., 2021; Murphy, In Press). Within this framework, distress is viewed as part of becoming fully-functioning and facilitates human flourishing within an educational environment.

Forest schools are an established pedagogy where human flourishing emerges through an educational process rooted in the philosophy of friluftsliv. It involves a community of learning that takes place regularly in natural environments, to develop the individual’s self-concept through their relationship to the natural world.

There is currently no specific provision for how the forest school pedagogy could benefit adults to cultivate human flourishing. Therefore, this research aims to examine how person-centred principles could be used to develop an outdoor experiential education for adults in the UK, and through that, contribute to a discursive shift towards emotional distress as an educational process and how this is impacted through awareness of the natural world .

Biography:

I currently run my own private practice where I work as a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and group facilitator. I am rooted in a relational way of working and feel passionately about developing an understanding of a non pathologising approach to emotional distress. With that, I recognise the necessity to explore the experience of human flourishing outside of solely a healthcare framework.I graduated from the University of Nottingham with an MA in Person-Centred Counselling and Psychotherapy in 2019.I am an experienced long-distance hiker and backpacker; hiking numerous long distance trails in the USA and UK. These experiences showed me how our relationship to the natural world is imperative to be fully human and can cultivate a deeper relationship inwardly. I continue to spend as much time as possible in the mountains, forests or near a lake.

Publications:

Lakin, J., & Murphy, D. (2024). A pilot qualitative study of a person-centered approach to eating distress in women. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 23(4), 512–530. https://doi.org/10.1080/14779757.2023.2273474

School of Education

University of Nottingham

2026 Cohort

Supervisors:

Prof. David Murphy

Dr Jenny Elliott