OUTDOOR LEARNING IN-SERVICE TRAINING FOR TEACHERS A CASE STUDY FROM PRATO
Abstract
Children today spend significantly less time playing outdoors than their parents did. Therefore, great attention must be paid by professionals to face this educational challenge, especially within early childhood scholastic contexts. That is a particular task for Outdoor Education (OE), a field of practice and research traditionally associated with personal and social development, and environmental education. The field has rich histories in some European countries (e.g. UK, Scandinavian nations, Germany), but nowadays is also more common in Italy, from where this Case Study comes. The aim for this study was to reinforce teachers’ awareness about how best to use the outdoors at school, to construct a supportive context for activities, to extend their classrooms into the school grounds and local neighbourhood. Our article aims to enable educators to understand also the philosophical underpinnings of an educational model based on experiential Outdoor Learning (OL) in authentic contexts, which can be adopted and adapted by educators across Europe.
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