Knowledge through action : Teachers' perceptions of the landscape as a learning environment

This is a licentiate dissertation consisting of a summarizing section and two free-standing but coherent articles, one of which has previously been published in ascientific journal while the other is accepted for publication. The unifying link is the theme of attempting to establish the kernel of outdoor education, as it isunderstood by teachers active in the field. The study depicts with the help of semi-structured interviews the respondents’ conceptions of teaching and outdooreducation. The first article is a survey (accomplished in A - School and B - School) of teachers’ perceptions of learning and teaching outdoors in preschool – (to) thefirst year of the compulsory school. The second article is a study of teachers’ perceptions of the possible special nature of outdoor education after having experiencedan educational intervention in the subject (preschool to first year). Both articles treat the special nature of outdoor education coupled with learning and outdoorteaching in light of the overall research question, what perceptions do teachers have of learning and teaching outdoors? The summarizing section which discusses thetwo articles is divided into five different parts. Chapter I comprises a social and environmental analysis and indicates the need for research in the field of outdoor education. Chapter II deals with the aim, issuesand theoretical perspectives of learning which are tied to knowledge through action, ecological readability and bodily learning. A number of restricted examples areselected among theoreticians and representatives of these three perspectives within the reform pedagogy movement, American pragmatism, the environmental studymovement and theories of the phenomenology of the body, the learning body in movement. The methodological basis for the analysis of the two articles is phenomenographic and is described in Chapter III. In Chapter IV the possible special nature ofoutdoor education is analysed, noting what stands out as especially prominent in the respondents’ answers and in what way, proceeding from questions such as what isoutdoor education for you, what is the difference between learning outdoors and indoors, and why teach outdoors? Four categories of response can be distinguished: aplace for learning, a way of learning, an object of learning and bodily learning. At the end of Chapter IV the results of both articles are summarised. Finally, Chapter Vcomprises a discussion proceeding from a metacategorisation of all descriptive categories from both articles. The discussion has led to the identification of threethematised perspectives, namely the place perspective, the environment perspective and the body perspective. These perspectives, place, environment and body, arelinked back to the technical frame of reference in Chapter II. The result of the two part studies, the survey study in article 1 and the educational intervention in article 2, indicates a multiplicity of varied perceptions of thespecial nature of outdoor education and can thus be said to characterise this as richly diversified. As regards teachers’ notions of the principal reasons for learning andteaching outdoors, the following four aspects are foregrounded: the place for learning the object of learning the way of learning bodily learning Two main categories were identified in article 2 which are treated in education in the subject after a five-day course (10 half study days), teachers who perceive aspecial nature in outdoor education and teachers who do not. Both main categories crystallised out after the educational intervention was implemented in Byskolan andStadsskolan (the Village School and the Town School), the latter being the reference school. One year after the completion of the educational intervention mostteachers in the Village School associated the special nature of outdoor education with a more authentic, body and sensory experience related, movement intensive and health promoting learning than traditional learning in the classroom. Proceeding from a metacategorisation the three above-mentioned thematised perspectives are described in Chapter V. These reflect the identified responsecategories in articles 1 and 2. The analysis of the empirical material of the investigation reveals that the special nature of outdoor education from the respondents´ perspective is related to place,to the environment and to the body.Serienumret är felaktigt i avhandlingen och skall vara 251.