A five-month full-time eco-traineeship in pre-service primary school training

Abstract

Belgian primary schools very rarely adopt an outdoor learning approach. Yet most geography and science teacher trainers involved in pre-service teacher training see the environment around schools as a resource on which to develop learning in all disciplines, and a place to develop environmental and eco-citizenship education. Training teachers to follow this vision is hard, especially now with a generation of students who have a self-confined lifestyle, lack interest in walking and have almost no connection with nature. In the Haute École Libre mosane (Liège, Belgium), an alternative strategy based on a service-learning approach was tested for two years during a whole term: volunteer students followed an eco-traineeship in a non-formal organization, for which they had to design and complete an environmental education project. The main results of this action research are presented here.

Keywords:

• Pre-service teacher training
• service-learning
• extramural school
• environmental education
• eco-citizenship education

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the academic pool of the HELMo University College, the members of the research support committee and our colleagues, which allowed us to experiment with a very innovative training module. We are grateful to the students involved in the action research and to their parents, who trusted us and took on the risk of the Ecostage adventure with us. Our thanks also go to the eco-traineeship tutors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Research team in 2014-2016: A.-C. Grodos, G. Meunier and C. Partoune (coordinator); in 2016-2018: H. Bernard and C. Partoune.

2 The Institut d’Eco-Pédagogie is a NGO specialised in training and research in environmental education – renamed Ecotopie-laboratoire d’écopédagogie, asbl, since August 2020. www.ecotopie.be

3 Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a GPS receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called ‘geocaches’ or ‘caches’, at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook.

4 A River Contract involves bringing all the stakeholders in a valley around the same table, with a view to defining by consensus a programme of actions to restore the rivers, their surroundings and the water resources of the basin: environnement.wallonie.be/contrat_riviere/contrats.htm

5 The European beaver was part of the native fauna in Belgium. Exploited then considered harmful, it disappeared in the 19th century. It was reintroduced in the early 90s. It has now benefited from full protection since European directive Habitat (92/43). The animal’s cohabitation with humans is controversial.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Wallonie-Bruxelles Federation, Wallonia Public Service and the Centre de Recherche des Instituts Groupés de la Haute École Libre mosane.

This work was supported by the Wallonie-Bruxelles Federation, Wallonia Public Service and the Centre de Recherche des Instituts Groupés de la Haute École Libre mosane.