The design of this project is a two-day professional learning workshop for educators and educational stakeholders (including administrators, parents, and community members). I chose this design because my teaching partner and I will be hosting similar sessions with families at our school in the Fall as a way of introducing our pilot nature-based program. It is equally applicable as a professional learning workshop for teachers, and it may be part of a sequence we use to support educators in our school in taking students outside. Such professional learning communities offer safe spaces for educators to collectively question their practice and refine their principles and beliefs through collaborative inquiry into teaching and learning. Educators learning together is the fifth principle of teaching effectiveness advocated by Friesen (2009). Our workshop will be divided into four sessions with each session being approximately 1h30.
Day 1 AM: Empathising with participants
- Use provocation (activity? video clip? student story?) and talking circles to determine what participants envision nature-based learning to look like, sound like, feel like…
Day 1 PM: Brainstorm
- Use provocation (activity? video? student story?) and small group collaboration around guiding questions. Gallery walk. Knowledge building circle.
Day 2 AM: Defining our collective beliefs
- Collective Immunity Map (Kegan and Lahey, 2009)
- Intention, Actively doing/not doing, Hidden commitments, Core assumptions
Day 2 PM: Defining our personal beliefs
- Individual reflection and small group share out
Through a series of provocations and knowledge building circles, we will explore the question:
How do we learn together on this land?
The following sub-questions inspired by Madjidi and Restoule’s (2008) comparative study on Western and Indigenous epistemologies will help guide our inquiry:
- What is learning?
- Where do people go to learn?
- How do people learn?
- Who (or what) do they learn from?
- Why and for what purpose do they learn?
For the practical application of the project design, we will be using the BC Curriculum for Grade 4/5. For EDUC 5990, I will use the BC Curriculum for Grade 4 Science and English Language Arts as a model for demonstrating curriculum connections in a nature-based learning environment. With the emergent nature of inquiry learning outdoors (Hoed, 2014), I will leave the curricular content (know) connections open and focus on the big ideas and curricular competencies:
Science 4 (https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/science/4)
All living things sense and respond to their environment.
Curricular Competencies
Questioning and Predicting
Demonstrate curiosity about the natural world
Observe objects and events in familiar contexts
English Language Arts 4 (https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/english-language-arts/4)
Exploring stories and other texts helps us understand and make connections to others and to the world.
Curricular Competencies
Comprehend and Connect (reading, listening, viewing)
Use personal experience and knowledge to connect to text and deepen understanding of self, community, and world
Identify how story in First Peoples cultures connects people to land
Arguably, all of the core competencies will be used in this project, however, I will make explicit connection to two profiles from Positive Personal and Cultural Identity and Social Awareness and Responsibility:
Positive Personal and Cultural Identity – Profile 4
I have pride in who I am. I understand that I am part of a larger community.
Social Awareness and Responsibility – Profile 4
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies/personal-and-social/social-awareness-and-responsibility
I can take purposeful action to support others and the environment.
Similarly, there is opportunity for a number of the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning (FPPL) to connect with the inquiry. I will focus on two:
Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).
Learning requires exploration of one’s identity.
Simply being present outside does not necessitate a pedagogy of place. Although nature-based learning operates with the understanding that the Land is the First Teacher and the land is a pedagogical partner, content and skills are still important aspects in student learning (Cassidy & Wright, 2015). The study of place can support an increase in student engagement “through multidisciplinary, experiential, and intergenerational learning that is not only relevant but potentially contributes to the well-being of community life” (Gruenewald, 2003b, p. 7). Inquiry offers a supportive design that puts students at the centre, and moves beyond doing for the sake of doing or leaving children to their own devices. Nature-based learning is inherently imaginative, engaging, and with teacher support, students will develop the habits of thought for connecting learning to themselves, to others, and to place (Clifford and Friesen, 2003).
Orr (2013) supplements this notion inquiry and argues the integration of place into education is important for four main reasons: (1) it combines intellect with experience; (2) it is multidisciplinary and combats overspecialization; (3) it “reeducat[es] people in the art of living well where they are” (p. 186); and (4) it promotes an ethical stance of place-making. Prioritising place in education emphasises the relationship between individual and land, individual and other, and how students and educators situate themselves in the social history of the land. With this in mind, there are additional questions worth exploring within the topic of nature/placed-based learning:
How does knowing our local environment help us know ourselves?
What is gained when we view the world through nature’s patterns, cycles, and systems to benefit all people and the future?
How do the landscape, community infrastructure, watersheds, and cultural traditions all interact and shape each other?
What questions of sustainability live in our community?
