Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted school on all levels and has encouraged a critical rethinking of teaching-learning practices and learning environments. As a response to the pandemic emergency, in the last two years Outdoor education (OE) approach has become popular also in Italy countering the limits imposed by the pandemic on the measures of Covid-19 prevention (social distancing, preferences for outdoor places, etc.). Regarding the OE pedagogical approach, the scientific literature ([1] [2]) lists the favorable effects of engaging students in experiential learning and field-based education. Immersing students in physically active and offering them authentic activities improve students’ well-being, increase their self-efficacy and promote students’ motivation to learn. This research contribution aims at describing the first results of a multiple case study investigating the impact of OE on teaching-learning practices in Italian Primary Schools. The study started in 2020 is still ongoing and it is aimed at identifying distinctive national identity for OE in Italy. The schools under investigation are two primary schools in Centre Italy (IC 12 in Bologna and IC Venturino Venturi in Loro Ciuffenna –AR–), and one primary school in South Italy (Giovanni XXIII” in Acireale – CT–) of the Avanguardie Educative (AE) Movement. AE is a cultural Movement founded to collect the most significant experiences of organizational and educational innovations in Italian schools and to encourage the transformation of the traditional lecture-based school model. With the aim of supporting an innovation process that has come out of bottom-up reasoning, INDIRE (National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research) and 22 founder member schools (advanced schools) have written a Manifesto that inspired the “Gallery of Ideas”. These ideas are experiences of innovation that began to gradually change the organization, school time, and learning spaces for teaching in ways that would encourage pupils to take an active role in teaching-learning processes. The experiences of primary school analyzed in this paper refer to one of these innovative ideas: “Outdoor education” ([3]). A variety of qualitative data collection procedures have been used: semi-structured interviews, observation tools, analysis of organizational and public documents, and narrative tools. The data collected reveal that OE: has transformed the lecture-based model, mainly based on the frontal lesson, by introducing active teaching and learning practices, has fostered flow access between the use of the indoor and outdoor space, has redesigned school-time in order to foster outdoor collaborative activities and experiential learning. In summary, in the three schools observed, OE pedagogical approach has promoted schools’ educational and organizational renewal according to AE Manifesto’s dimensions: teaching-learning practices, space and school-time.

References:
[1] Schenetti, M., Salvaterra, I., Rossini, B. 2015, La scuola nel bosco: Pedagogia, didattica e natura, Erickson, Trento.
[2] Schenetti, M. (Ed.) 2022, Didattica all'aperto. Metodologie e percorsi per insegnanti della scuola primaria, Erickson, Trento.
[3] Giunti, C., Lotti, P., Mosa, E., Naldini, M., Orlandini, L., Panzavolta, S., Tortoli, L. et al. (Eds) 2021, Avanguardie educative. Linee guida per l’implementazione dell’idea Outdoor education, Indire, Firenze. https://pheegaro.indire.it/uploads/attachments/4525.pdf

Keywords:

Outdoor education, school innovation, teaching-learning practices, learning environments, well-being, Covid-19 pandemic.