Teaching and learning in nature

Herbert Zoglowek and Carsten Gade Rolland

To use nature as a field of learning has a good tradition in Norway. The national curriculum opens several possibilities but it’s up to the local schools to include natural environments and to arrange nature and experience-base learning situations.

In the theoretical approach in the first part of the paper discussed how experiences can be used as a didactical category. With a starting point in a pedagogical, philosophical inspection of the word “experiences”, we want to discuss which important learning experiences can have a constructivist learning theory. In the second part, we want to present a model for a general teacher of education which is based on this understanding. Experiential and outdoor education is the basic method for a general teacher education and the school subjects ‘friluftsliv’ and ‘natural sciences’ are the basic subjects. This model which uses nature and experiences in nature as a starting point for learning processes is developed and realised at the university college in Alta, in northern Norway.

Hogskolen I Finnmark
Norway
Tel: 4778450255
Email: erbert@hifm.no
catsenr@h9ifm.no