Engaging and embedding outdoor learning and sustainability in our school cultures Erasmus Project

Project Title

Engaging and embedding outdoor learning and sustainability in our school cultures

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

In light of the increasing prevalence of electronic, on-demand entertainment, schools across the developed world are seeing a decrease in various skills and life experiences that their pupils exhibit and experiences they bring from outside the school context. For example, young children can find it difficult to engage in writing, talking or acting about unfamiliar contexts because of a lack of exploratory or ‘adventures’ they have had.
Conversely, in response, government and education authorities are now actively promoting the outdoors as a valuable and stimulating teaching context. However, our schools find variations in children’s preparedness and existing knowledge to take part in outdoor learning because of the changes in their families’ lifestyles. Children and young people need to interact with nature, natural spaces and history/culture around them in order to care enough for it that they become global citizens who take their own small actions towards living more sustainably. Schools are also now being instructed to teach Learning for Sustainability throughout the curriculum and in many ways this discipline goes hand-in-hand and complements outdoor learning. Norway’s rural schools have made good use of outdoor spaces for learning for many years; Scotland is one of the first countries to make Learning for Sustainability an entitlement in the curriculum.
This project seeks to investigate how the two countries’ education systems can learn from one other and enhance confident practice in both. In doing so, our aims are to better understand the experiences of nature and local culture that our young people come from and to seek to grow their connection to their local natural/cultural environment. With this research, we can better structure our progression of outdoor learning. In addition, we aim to improve the way that learning for sustainability is embedded across the curriculum by increasing teacher understanding of the concepts and improving their integration of these into many topics of study by producing a professional guide.
The project will involve two primary schools, one with a large roll (480) in Scotland and the other a small roll (51) in Norway. The project will involve all children and families in these schools in the gathering of data and in classroom learning tasks related to the project. All teaching staff will be involved in the collegiate activities examining outdoor learning and sustainability. During the project, pupils will engage in activities designed to build their knowledge, identification and conservation of local nature. Pupils will survey peers and families about engagement with nature and will audit and compare the schools’ own sustainable practices. Findings and learning will be shared using eTwinning and pupils will produce nature/culture guides building on their studies for use during exchanges. In the exchanges (10 children from each country travelling) pupils will participate in outdoor learning, cultural visits/activities and sustainability lessons jointly with the partner school to share their knowledge and increased engagement. Staff in both schools will work to build sustainability into their plans, later working on shared joint topics between classes in the partner schools. Project staff will participate in joint training to share specialist knowledge, review and compare data from participant surveys and learn from best practice to cascade to colleagues.
Following the training and exchanges and final surveying, we will produce a progressive guide for outdoor learning comprising best practice from both countries, and a guide for teachers in how to embed Learning for Sustainability in classroom planning. These documents will be shared with the wider teaching community through professional publications and training events. Pupils will collaboratively produce and improve two local guide books (one per country) to nature and cultural sites, which will be available publicly and whose use will be encouraged in the school communities. We envisage that through the specially designed activities, we will see increased engagement levels from pupils and families in local nature and culture, ultimately improving theirs and the schools’ wellbeing. Finally, staff will demonstrate increased skill and confidence in the integration of outdoor learning and learning for sustainability in their curriculum planning. With this better understanding of how our pupils engage with nature and better professional understanding of how to implement LfS in the curriculum through the guides created (which will be editable and updated in future) there will be long-term benefits for pupils and staff with well-designed curriculum planning based on best practice.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 39501 Eur

Project Coordinator

Robert Douglas Memorial School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Steigenskolen avd Nordfold