Abstract:

From our personal point of view, the Sustainable Leisure Education or EOS model we present in this paper could represent a renovating educational approach in which one can see, on one hand, how the basis for environmental and leisure education come together, and, on the other, a different way to approach curriculum design.

With regard to the basics of the model, after having studied the fundamentals of the environmental and leisure education from a humanistic perspective, it has led us to propose a new educational approach. This study constitutes the result of more than ten years of work and reflection on our way of understanding leisure and its education, as well as the reality of protected natural parks and the possibilities they offer to leisure and education.

The EOS model develops around a series of principles, some basic foundational elements and some working tools.

The principles constitute the foundations supporting the different defining elements and they are the ones from which the rest of the elements come and emerge. Such is the case of the purpose of the model: To increase people’s quality of life by means of leisure experiences in protected natural parks, experiences that are gratifying for both themselves and future generations and sustainable with a healthy, eco-friendly natural area identified as the context outside which that experience would not be possible.

The basic elements are, together with the principles, the identity features of sustainable leisure education. Identifying and specifying them will turn out to be a fundamental aspect when planning and scheduling quality, efficient and coherent educational processes.

Closely linked to these essential features we find a series of working tools that will contribute to the appropriate design of the educational process. With the EOS model we intend to provide both appropriate professionals and educators with a framework that can act as a guideline for educational planning and, more precisely, for curriculum design. This is done by means of specifying all those aspects and variables considered most relevant for an adequate design of the processes of education in a specific intervention context: sustainable leisure and natural parks. Thus, the EOS model would facilitate the process of designing and developing suitable processes of education through sustainable leisure experiences outdoors.

Back to the working tools, on one hand, these tools correspond with a diagnostic tool. The outcomes of their implementation will have to be carefully written down, selected and/or adapted to match the reality we depart from, as well as the goals, contents and even educational activities. On the other hand, they also correspond with a series of guidelines for the correct layout and formulation (writing) of the different elements that shape any process of sustainable leisure education.

Keywords:

Education, leisure, environment, EOS, model, approach, natural parks, planning, programming, key competences, social and civic competence, lifelong learning.