Political pressure from above (Open School) and a burgeoning movement from below (Outdoor School) have set the compass needle to point out the school and thus look at ‘places’ opportunities for learning’. All places have their own potentials for being arenas for teaching and the didactic selection of the place is crucial for the students’ outcomes. In this roundtable discussion, we focus on the opportunities, limitations and potentials of moving science teaching out of school to a selected location. The place influences, for example, authenticity, motivation and coherent professional understanding. But how do you link a place with your planned academic content? What experiences/knowledge do I draw on, and how can we learn more about this place-based field together?

This SIG group will work with both content and form as well as links between schools and external learning environments. In addition, we will put the long light on and together look forward to future challenges in a way where we both find solutions and influence the field in a direction where more people have the opportunity to form collaborations. Through these collaborations, we work to ensure that more students are able to put goals from school into an authentic context of experiences and professionals, and the students thereby see connections between man and nature and in this way promote their scientific and democratic educational processes.

The purpose of a Special Interest Group (SIG) on External Learning Environments is to promote a deeper understanding of the collaboration between schools and external learning environments. The SIG brings together various actors with an interest in the field, including teacher educators, science education researchers and teachers from external learning environments, to jointly qualify and strengthen teaching and learning in authentic contexts. The group will also provide influence among decision-makers and promote collaboration between schools and external learning environments with a focus on science and place-based learning.

Special areas of interest

Political influence and cooperation in DASERA: How can we in DASERA investigate, answer and influence the following questions politically? We work to promote a political agenda that strengthens collaboration between schools and external learning environments through political influence, e.g. by promoting PhD calls and involvement in major research projects.

1. The link between the school and the external learning environment: How do these links happen in practice, and how can we work systematically to break down barriers? Teachers play a central role in choosing places and creating academic coherence between teaching goals and the place the students visit. There is also a potential to see learning environments as interdisciplinary and general educational, which can provide a deeper understanding of academic content.
2. The special didactic tools in the external learning environments: External learning environments differ from the classroom and the students’ normal school day by creating an authentic learning situation. What tools and pedagogical/didactic approaches can we describe – both based on experience and research?
3. The teacher’s role before, during and after the visit: Teachers play a crucial role in ensuring that the visit is successful. Their preparation, participation and post-processing of the visit are crucial to create coherence in the students’ learning. How can we work to strengthen the teacher’s role in the external learning environments and in teacher education, so that they feel better equipped to handle teaching outside school?
4. Unique opportunities of external learning environments: What unique learning opportunities do places such as museums, natural areas and scientific centres offer? This can be access to people with specialized knowledge, artefacts, natural areas or buildings that do not exist in the daily school environment. These opportunities can provide students with new perspectives that are difficult to achieve in the classroom.

The work ahead

To further work with these areas of interest, we will focus on:

• Look ahead to new opportunities and trends.
• Anticipate and plan for obstacles, such as municipal cuts to Open School projects.
• Sharpen our messages to 2-3 clear headlines that can be used for political influence.
• Become more politically active by concretely reaching out to decision-makers and presenting our recommendations.
• Influence NAFA and other relevant institutions to prioritise research in external learning environments, e.g. via PhD calls.
• Work at both national, municipal, school, pupil and teacher level to ensure that collaboration with external learning environments becomes an integral part of the schools’ science teaching.
• How can you see the impact of DASERA’s on the new curricula?

Links til dokumenter og tidligere aktiviteter.