Christoph Mall

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Research Assistant at Technical University of Munich

Background Health inequity (HI) remains a major challenge in public health. Improving the health of children with low socioeconomic status (SES) can help to reduce overall HI in children. Childhood obesity is a global problem, entailing several adverse health effects. It is crucial to assess the influencing factors for adoption, implementation, and...

This work presents a prototype for a multimodal and augmented-reality (AR) based system designed to facilitate individual and social activities, promote health and well-being and support participation for various people. A practice-based design and research approach was used to explore requirements, to conceptualize, design and develop AR-based act...

Promoting physical activity has become a significant global health priority in recent years. Sedentary lifestyles and their associated health risks have become a significant concern, necessitating innovative approaches to encourage individuals to adopt and sustain active habits. Integrating technology with physical activity interventions has 2 show...

The aim of this workbook is to enable interested innovators to make their city active and to bring Joy of Movement everywhere. Its practical part is oriented along the eight steps of Holistic Innovation that act as a leading structure to make the adventure of innovation more comprehensible and logical. To increase practical relevance and applicabil...

Introduction Social interaction is associated with many effects on the psychological level of children such as mental health, self-esteem, and executive functions. Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC) describes regular curricular classes/lessons outside the school building, often in natural green and blue environments. Applied as a long-term scho...

Background: Health inequity (HI) remains a major challenge in public health. Improving the health of children with low socioeconomic status (SES) can help to reduce overall HI in children. Childhood obesity is a global problem, entailing several adverse health effects. It is crucial to assess influencing factors for adoption, implementation and sus...

Background To investigate contextual factors that influence the implementation of obesity prevention interventions in school addressing children with low socioeconomic status (SES) is very important. Evidence about these factors helps to improve the implementation, which can promote the health of children with low SES and therefore reduce health in...

Background Health inequity (HI) remains a major challenge in public health. Improving the health of children with low socioeconomic status (SES) can help to reduce overall HI in children. Childhood obesity is a global problem, entailing several adverse health effects. It is crucial to assess the influencing factors for adoption, implementation and...

This work presents a practice-based design and research approach that was used to explore individual, contextual, and institutional requirements, conceptualize and design AR-based Outdoor-scenarios for individual and joint activities in outdoor sports. Based on the need for social interaction and computer-supported collaborative sports and the decr...

Background: Education outside the classroom (EOtC) is considered beneficial to children's physical and mental health. Especially, stress resilience has been linked to nature experience. Aims: This study experimentally explored the effects of pupils' autonomy support (AUT) and physical activity (PA) on their biological stress responses and brain...

The development of 21st century skills in or rather through science teaching is on the agenda of many national and international school reforms aiming at creating so-called 21st century classrooms. In this context autonomous learning and practical relevance of science classes have been identified as important features, and education outside the cla...

Background A recent dialogue in the field of play, learn, and teach outdoors (referred to as “PLaTO” hereafter) demonstrated the need for developing harmonized and consensus-based terminology, taxonomy, and ontology for PLaTO. This is important as the field evolves and diversifies in its approaches, contents, and contexts over time and in different...

Die nachhaltige Implementierung und Durchführung des Draußenunterrichts hängt maßgeblich vom Engagement der durchführenden Lehrkräfte ab. Unbedingt sollte in der Forschung deshalb verstärkt deren Perspektive berücksichtigt werden. Nach wie vor besteht in dieser Hinsicht jedoch ein Defizit. Auf Basis einer Onlineumfrage unter Regellehrkräften, Drauß...

Background Given a suboptimal state of mental health among children, an urgent need exists to seek approaches related to health promotion in this population’s settings, such as in schools. Increased health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and improved school motivation could be crucial for children’s mental health. Based on self-determination theory...

Praxishinweise für den Draußenunterricht

Physical activity (PA) in school physical education (PE) is a signature component of health promotion and health education. The study's aim was to explore PA levels and sedentary time in German elementary school PE lessons and relate them to selected personal and environmental PA determinants. Accelerometer measurements were collected from 328 stud...

Background: Regular physical activity (PA) and reduced sedentary behavior (SB) are positively related to children's health and considered as pillars of a healthy lifestyle. Full-day schools with their afterschool programs (ASPs) have an impact on children's daily PA and SB. Studies investigating PA and SB in ASPs, which compare PA and SB between th...

Accelerometers offer opportunities for researchers to capture valid data about the intensity and amount of physical behavior (PB) in real-time over a period of several days and weeks. From this multidimensional data, a great number of metrics can be derived to capture and describe the unique aspects of PB. The goal of this paper is to help the end-...

This doctoral thesis examined Education Outside the Classroom (EOtC), i.e. regular compulsory school and curriculum-based education in a natural or cultural setting outside the school building. First, a systematic literature review showed that EOtC can have a positive impact on students in terms of social, academic, physical and psychological facto...

Achievement Goal Theory (AGT) has been applied as a core concept for understanding and promoting students' motivation in physical education (PE) and shows considerable relevance for theoretically and empirically justifying the significance of PE. However, systematically organized reviews of empirical research on AGT are limited to physical activiti...

The worldwide prevalence of mental disorders in children and adolescents increased constantly. Additionally, the recommended amount of physical activity (PA) is not achieved by this age group. These circumstances are associated with negative impacts on their health status in later life and can lead to public health issues. The exposure to natural g...

Education outside the classroom (EOtC) can be beneficial for students. The relationship between biological stress markers and sedentary behavior (SB) plus physical activity (PA) is insufficiently evaluated in school settings. This exploratory study aims to evaluate the association between students' cortisol, plus circulating cell-free deoxyribonucl...

Research has shown that outdoor educational interventions can lead to students' increased self-regulated motivational behavior. In this study, we searched into the satisfaction of basic psychological needs (BPN), i.e., autonomy support, the learners' experience of competence, and relatedness, both within the peer group and with their teachers, thro...

Background: Participants in Outdoor Education Programmes (OEPs) presumably benefit from these programmes in terms of their social and personal development, academic achievement and physical activity (PA). The aim of this systematic review was to identify studies about regular compulsory school- and curriculum-based OEPs, to categorise and evaluate...

This prospective longitudinal survey compared the stress levels of students taught using an outdoor curriculum in a forest, with children in a normal school setting. We were especially interested in the effect outdoor teaching might have on the children's normal diurnal cortisol rhythm. 48 children (mean age = 11.23; standard deviation (SD) = 0.46)...

Introduction: In recent years, there is an increasing number of expeditions with educational aims for young people, and some of those address the specific goal of environmental education or "global learning". Those expditions usually lead to spectacular places, such as the Arctic or the Galapagos-Islands, and produce high environmental costs. In th...

This paper presents data from a mixed-method pilot study (n = 84) searching into learning psychological aspects of an outdoor science teaching program. We use data from qualitative explorations into the pupils' learning motivation during field observation, a group interview, and open questionnaires, in order to understand quantitative measures from...

Einleitung Outdoor-Education-Programme (OEP) nutzen für die Umsetzung ihrer pädagogischen Ziele Natursportarten als Medium. Und obwohl TeilnehmerInnen solcher Bildungsmaßnahmen körperlich häufig sehr stark beansprucht werden, wird die Bedeutung der körperlichen und sportlichen Aktivität in diesem Feld bisher kaum reflektiert und das Ausmaß der phys...