Abstract:

University teaching syllabuses dealing with landscape have been traditionally addressed in Europe by means of diverse conceptual, methodological and curricular approaches. However, ensuing the implementation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in 2000, landscape education has turned into a new and challenging item within the Higher Education Area (HEA). Indeed, landscape is undergoing a deep renovation process and a conceptual and methodological renaissance; the University is at the core of this renovation, in bearing with its role as a promoter of the social sensitivity and public interest required by the landscape concept. The importance of landscape as an ingredient for quality of life and culture, the steady degradation of a substantial fraction of the territory, and the increasing demand of experts in the fields of landscape protection, management and planning: all of these factors are persuading the teaching community to include landscape among the issues demanding an upgraded knowledge transfer. Therefore, a necessary step is to incorporate the education-landscape couple into the pedagogical circuit, and to ascertain the role demanded from teaching innovation in this subject-matter.
This paper is based on a Specific Cooperation Agreement established in 2006 between the Spanish Environment Ministry (Department of Territory and Biodiversity), the University of Seville and the Institute for Landscape and Territory (CEPT), for the execution of a “Report on the state of landscape in Spain, and drafting of policy measures aimed at implementing the ELC”. A methodological sequence for landscape analysis along the lines of the ELC is presented, focused on the design of a shared language and theoretical frame, compatible with similar developments across Europe. In concert with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the method here presented gives the student some tools for the acquisition of a conceptual framework and a knowhow platform in agreement with the ELC Guidelines and the requirements and expectations of the labor market in the countries subscribing this treaty.
Following the ELC Guidelines and the basic aspects of the British Landscape Character Assessment (LCA), one of the inspiring sources of the ELC, the proposed methodology consists of two stages. The first one, identification and characterization, involves four steps. The second stage, assessment and proposals, includes three phases.
This paper is aimed at spreading an updated insight on landscape issues, and to engage in a learning and ability building process whose final outcome should enable any student to participate as a civilian and as a professional in landscape issues, and to have a solid standpoint concerning landscape-related notions: the character and the quality of landscapes, their dynamics and transformations, their natural and ecological foundations, their economic background and their historical and/or ongoing processes, as well as their perception and the cultural meanings attached to them by the population. Landscape being a key resource for the construction of a holistic intellectual approach, the method here proposed opens the door to new research lines and new trans-disciplinary strategies in the general and specific didactics of Geography, Architecture, Environment Sciences, History, Education Science or Arts.

Keywords:

Innovation, landscape, method, European Landscape Convention.