Understanding teachers’ ‘levels of use’ of learnscapes

Abstract

All eight teachers and their principal, at an Australian regional primary school in New South Wales (NSW) accredited for its ongoing ‘learnscape’ developments, were interviewed. This was to ascertain their perceptions about the role of learnscapes and their self‐reported use of such outdoor areas to assist in the achievement of their State’s syllabus and environmental education learning outcomes. Teachers at the school (6) and their principal were (re)interviewed a year later to determine if changes in perceptions and practice had occurred and why. This paper interprets narratives derived from the combined interviews of these latter teachers and their principal from an educational change perspective in order to gain insight into their level of use of learnscapes. Teachers’ learnscape and environmental education content and pedagogical knowledge, their focus on the consequences of learnscape use for student learning, and awareness of multiple learning outcomes, including social learning, when using learnscapes, were among interdependent change factors identified which may assist in understanding why teachers embraced learnscapes to different degrees. Consequent avenues for increasing the future use of learnscapes for syllabus and environmental purposes are suggested.

Keywords:

• learnscapes
• teachers’ level of use
• environmental education

Acknowledgements

The receipt of an Australian Research Council Grant assisted in the collection of data and the transcription of interviews.

Dr Iris Bergmann interviewed the teachers in this study and organised the transcription.

The interviewed teachers who readily shared their thoughts and ideas about learnscapes.

Reviewers who offered useful feedback on earlier versions of this paper when presented at the Australian Association for Environmental Education conference in Adelaide in 2004 and its submissions to Environmental Education Research.