Attunement as a Pedagogical Starting Point

For many teachers, the value of pedagogical reflection is missing from practice. Rational educational approaches that prioritize judging and measuring students overshadow the relational dimension of teaching. Our study investigated this relational gap to explore more fully teachers’ attunement to the child as a unique person. We examined lived experiences of six teachers pedagogically engaged with children (K–12) participating in an active outdoor living program. The program aimed to develop a youth network of friends, nurturing positive self-esteem and youth leadership. Using a phenomenological method, we facilitated open-ended interviews to show teachers’ pedagogical awareness through hermeneutic conversations. We present the data as three anecdotes representing a synthesis of teacher reflection, writing, and on-going conversation. Our findings reveal the importance of being-in-time with children as teachers relate pedagogical moments with children learning outdoors. Through attunement as the flexibility to adapt educational challenges and approaches to suit the moment and uniqueness of the child, teachers became careful observers, allowing students to be children without the competing tensions of institutional expectations.

Differences in Self-Directed Learning: Middle-School Students’ Autonomous Outdoor Studying

The use of self-directed learning (SDL) is an increasingly widespread trend in schools, although its core—the student’s attentional capability for multi-level processing—to construct relevant concepts and at the same time to keep in mind the needed sub-items, while also directing one’s own learning, has not been thoroughly investigated. We examined autonomous learning outdoors in small groups with 122 school students aged 14–16 years (the period that, through the developmental peculiarities of puberty, causes variety in cognitive skills). To detect whether individual characteristics reflect in students’ SDL progress, we measured participants’ pre-knowledge, their problem-solving strategies, and post-knowledge. We also asked about their prior SDL experience. The results showed 1) relations between one’s pre-and post-knowledge levels; 2) the impact of gender in the SDL efficacy; 3) the difficulty to memorize in the course of complex tasks while learning on one’s own. Our work gives insight into the SDL-specific heightened cognitive demand: school students’ cognitive obstacles in heavy load conditions and their prolonged maturation of executive functions—especially in adolescence as this age group passes its normal biological spurts of the human developmental path—which may differ individually.

Wilding liability in education: Introducing the concept of wide risk as counterpoint to narrow-risk-driven educative practice

Consideration of risk and liability in outdoor educative practice has normally been limited to the narrow risks, usually to physical health, of incidents that can cause a particular injury. In this view of risk management, the more readily controlled the circumstance, the less likelihood of risk and consequent liability. Thus, to reduce risk, learning in the natural world is often avoided because it occurs in far more complex and less controllable contexts than human-created ones. However, wider and more grave risks to physical, emotional and mental health that may accrue through a life that is lived in separation from the natural world are not often considered or evaluated. In part, this may be because these kinds of risks are less immediately evident, and liability for negative outcomes may be more difficult to measure. Thus, there is less incentive to consider them. However, delayed outcomes are still outcomes. To consider easily discerned narrow risk alone, while ignoring more complex and longer-term wide risk, is no excuse for avoiding the ethical responsibility that public education carries to provide both the safest and most fecund context for learning. This paper introduces the concept of wide risk as a counterpoint to the narrow risk calculations now performed, and argues that in incorporating an understanding of wide risk in educative practice, at least two results are likely. The first is that learning outdoors will frequently be discovered to be a less risky alternative, if a broad range of outcomes over time are considered. The second is that the value of embracing risk in all aspects of learning ought to become a part of the learning process, and part of what is taught in public schools.

The impact of music making outdoors on primary school aged pupils (aged 7–10 years) in the soundscape of nature from the perspective of their primary school teachers

The benefits of taking pupils’ learning outdoors have been widely reported around the world. However, it is argued the simple act of stepping outside the classroom does not inevitably bring rewards. This study examines teachers’ perceptions of the impact of primary school pupils’ music-making in various outdoor rural locations. It analyses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with seven teachers from six different primary school classes, who observed their classes as they took part in the music-making. The validity of the teachers’ perceptions is triangulated with evidence from semi-structured interviews with six groups of children from the six different classes. The analyses show the teachers perceived that the space, the new soundscape and the close contact with nature afforded by the different locations engendered enhanced experimentation and expressiveness. The teachers suggested that, as a result, the children became immersed in, and focussed on, their music-making. The study suggests teachers identify potential benefits for children aged 7–10 years in making music in outdoor locations. We conclude greater phenomenological, body-focussed understandings in education and an increased awareness of somaesthetic perspectives may be beneficial for teachers to explore in pupils’ music- making and in other creative areas of the curriculum.

Life is better outside

Is the ‘new normal’ re-inforcing ideas that learning outdoors is key to children's well-being and progress? Perhaps after all there is the possibility for something good to come out of the Covid crisis.

Harmonization of Secondary School Inclusive Environment Based on the Concept of “Biophilic Design”

The analysis of scientific sources identifies one of the main concepts of modernity in secondary school design. This concept changes the model of teaching students with special health conditions. Professor Stephen R. Kellert from Yale university offered a study which revealed the content of the basic means of nature cognition in the constructed environment. They are as follows: 1) direct experience of natural phenomena (natural light, fresh air, water and plants); 2) indirect experience of natural elements (the use of natural materials, natural shaping elements and images of nature); 3) experience of space and place (perspective of the chosen place, organized complexity of the area, clear and visible transitional spaces). The influence of expressive artistic and technologically innovative methods on educational space modeling is determined to rise while designing a modern school. These methods are based on the principle of flowing the internal space into the external space. The importance of landscape areas designing in the school outdoor space located around the perimeter of the school, allows to feel the benefits of individual and group learning outdoors, giving a sense of protection to students with autism spectrum. Thus, the study revealed that, with the introduction of biophilic design concept, the formation of educational space allows to obtain the following results: 1) increase of attendance; 2) higher results in educational material assimilation; 3) higher level of assessment; 4) improvement of norms of behavior; 5) reducing of stress level; 6) raising of environmental education level through the actualization of the visual, tactile, behavioral and social aspects; 7) improving of creative activity of students; 8) active development of subjective attitude to nature and its components through the introduction of the model of ecologically oriented learning process.

“ZA PROGIEM”. Educational values of children's learning outdoors

The article presents the “ZA PROGIEM” – wyprawy odkrywców educational project implemented from August 2018 to July 2019 at the Institute of Pedagogy of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. The project was to develop key competences of students through development and teaching tasks implemented in four-person peer groups. The project consisted of two six-hour cycles of educational tasks: “Present, past and future of the tree” and “Scent trackers”. Problem-based tasks were carried out in various educational areas, in diverse natural, social and cultural contexts. The beneficiaries of the workshops were students of grades I–III, in 8 groups (7 from the rural environment, 1 from the urban environment), each consisting of 12 people. The research used the participant observation method and the document analysis method. The project confirmed that environmental education conducted outdoors is an important element of upbringing, increases children's perceptiveness and creates emotional connection to the nature.

Orienteering in Geography Education in Japanese High School

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Orienteering, a map activity, has been described as effective in learning geography in school education. When dealing with orienteering in school education, it is learning outdoors different from ordinary classroom lessons. Also, the environment surrounding school education differs from country to country. From this, it is important to show the practice of orienteering in school education in each country. In this research, I described the practice of orienteering in geography education of Japanese high schools in the following three viewpoints. The three viewpoints are the significance of orienteering in geography education, learning system of orienteering in geography education, examples of orienteering in geography education at school. The main points are as follows. <ol> <li>The skills given by orienteering are the basis of map learning and field learning in geography education.</li> <li>Learning system of orienteering is related to the map learning and field learning perspective, such as related to the map-scale linked with place.</li> <li>Orienteering practice in regular geography class at school grounds is the core, and good learning effect can be obtained. After this, orienteering can be expanded in a wide variety of directions.</li> </ol></p>