Outdoor life education in Norwegian secondary school - Nature materiality as the learning context

Author(s):

Åsve Murtnes(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Poster

Session Information

ERG SES C 06, Interactive Poster Session

Poster Session

Time:

2017-08-21

11:00-12:30

Room:

W3.16

Chair:

Sabine Krause

Contribution

Introductionand aim

Research show that more and more children live a disconnected childhood from the natural environment (Waite, Passy, Gilchrist, Hunt, Blacjwell, 2016). Experience in an outdoor environment enables the learners to become “successful learners and active contributing members for a sustainable society” (Malone & Waite, 2016). Research has pointed out that learners has limited opportunities to experience natural learning environment, both as formal and informal settings (Malone & Waite, 2016).

However, in the Norway outdoor life and outdoor environment is a part of the core National curriculum and the curriculum for the subjects. Regardless of this opportunity, one may say it is a missed opportunity in Norwegian context, as outdoor life seems not to be implemented in Norwegian secondary school (Leirhaug & Arnesen, 2016).

This PhD-project aims to contribute by developing a practice using the schools nearby environment to enhance the role of outdoor environment and outdoor life in secondary school. The intention is to investigate how outdoor life and the outdoor environment can contributes to learning and formation for youth age 13 - 16 years. To accomplish this I will collaborate with one schools teachers and learners to use the nearby environment as a learning context, emphasizing on hands-on, experience-based, active and cooperative learning. The main question for the project is:

How can nature materiality, concretized through an outdoor classroom as a learning arena, contribute to learning and formation in outdoor life?

To contribute to answering this the project focuses upon three main perspectives:

1) Teachers didactic and pedagogical reflections and collaboration using nature as the learning arena, 2) how learners interact and collaborate with each other and nature when nature is the learning arena, 3) how an outdoor camp can facilitate a learning arena for interdisciplinary learning assignments.

Main theoretical perspectives

Lave & Wenger (Wenger, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 2003) perspective on communities of practice will frame the theoretical perspectives. Both the teachers planning of the teaching, and the learners can be looked upon as communities of practices, this is a useful framework for research on the teachers and the learners collaboration, and how they bring natures materiality into the negotiation for learning and general education.

Gibsons (1986) theory of “affordances” provides me with a vocabulary to reflect upon nature materiality, and how the interaction between teachers perspectives, learners perspectives and how they interact with nature´s materiality. This vocabulary includes giving an analytic tool to illuminate the nature as a learning context, but also as a contributor when analyzing the planning and working with learning assignments in an outdoor classroom.

Method

Participant action research This is a participant action research project, where the goal is to 1) change the teachers practice, 2) change the teachers opinion of their practice and 3) change the context for the practice (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; Kemmis, McTaggart & Nixon, 2014). These three goals are in a dynamic relationship with each other, which means that when we move the classroom outside, the other two changes as well. The project to change these three goals is a collaboration with the teachers and me as a researcher. The practice consost of subject days in the schools surrounding environment. Subject days are three hours, at six different times a year where the entire school (100 learners) and all of its teachers (15 teachers) use the area outside working with learning assignments the teachers have developed. Since all of the staff is participating, with the different discipline background, the learning assignments is multiple- and interdisciplinary collaboration of disciplines. However, outdoor life is the initiative and the director for the learning assignments. To ensure the emancipatory and critical perspective in a participant action research the process is characterized by moving back and forth in the process. The process consists of: 1) planning the subjectdays, 2) acting and observing the consequences in the subjectsday, 3) reflecting upon the changes, 4) planning a new subject day. In my project this process repeats it selves at least six times. This process is documented from the early planning autumn 2015, until follow-up interview autumn 2017. Autumn 2016, we started the subject days as a part of the schools practice. The data from the three perspectives consists of maps and worksheets, mapping of teachers preunderstanding of the phenomenon, focus group interviews with teachers, teachers lessons plan, teachers log from the teaching and a questioner. The learners perspective consists of maps and worksheets, digital learning logs from each subject day and questioners. Additionally, I have made field notes in a form of method log (Grønmo, 2016) from every activity at the school. At this time in the project (halfe way through) it consists of 27 logs. The data will be thematically organized by using Nvivo, and analyzed and presented through narratives (Grønmo, 2016).

Expected Outcomes

Preliminary findings So far in the project is seems that it is an accomplishment, and a success factor that the subject days involves all of the teachers and all of the learners at the same time. This makes the project a part of the school profile and it gives the teacher a common practice. To prioritize time to plan the subject days becomes important both for the school leaders, and for all of the teachers. This is also beneficial for the learners, as the teachers emerges as coordinated. The teachers comments on being more conscious towards general education, and actively take the general curriculum into their work. They also look for outdoor classrooms that affords the possibilities for the learners to work together as small units, but at the same time that they are a part of the community of the class. Making the learners a participant both in the smaller group and in the class. During the learning assignments and learning activities in the subject days, the learners comments on learning as an experience and learning outside as motivational. In the Digital Learning Logs they document how the explore the affordances in nature, they talk about nature, the take picture of what they perceive as relevant in nature (Gibson, 1986; Heft, 1988; Kytta, 2002), the talk about what they have learned and how the learning process in the outdoor classroom has been.

References

Reference Gibson, James. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum. Heft, H. (1988). Affordances of children’s environments: a functional approach to environmental description. In: Children's environments Quarterly, 5(3), 29-37. doi:10.2307/41514683 Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (2005). Participatory action research: communicative action and the public sphere. I: Denzin, N. K., and Lincoln, Y. S., (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications, 3. Edition, Thousand Oaks, California, USA, pp. 559-603. Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: doing critical participatory action research. Singapore: Springer. Kyttä, M. (2002). Affordances of children’s enviroments in the context of cities, small towns, suburbs and rural villages in Finland and Belarus. In: Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22(1–2), 109-123. Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jevp.2001.0249 Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (2003). Situeret læring - og andre tekster (oversatt til dansk av Nake, Bjørn). København: Reitzel. Leirhaug, P. E., & Arnesen, T. E. (2016). Friluftsliv - et hovedområde i kroppsøvingsfaget? In Horgen, A., Fasting, M., Lundhaug, T., Magnussen, L.I., & Østrem, K., (Eds.), UTE! Friluftsliv - pedagogisk, historisk og sosiologiske perspektiver. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget. Malone, K. and Waite, S. (2016) Student Outcomes and Natural Schooling. Plymouth: Plymouth University. Available online: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/oelres-net Waite, S., Passy, R., Gilchrist, M., Hunt, A. & Blacjwell, I. (2016). Natural Connections Demonstration Project, 2012-2016: Final Report. Natural England Commissioned Reports, Number 215 Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Author Information

Åsve Murtnes (presenting / submitting)

University College of Southeast Norway

Notodden

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