Place-responsive pedagogy: learning from teachers’ experiences of excursions in nature

Abstract

The nature-based excursion has been a significant teaching strategy in environmental education for decades. This article draws upon empirical data from a collaborative research project where teachers were encouraged to visit natural areas to provide an understanding of their roles and experiences of planning and enacting excursions. The analysis indicates that teachers’ sensitisation towards place was aided by collaboration, advance planning visits and the very practice of making place-responsive excursions with pupils. The authors build on the analysis to propose a theory of place-responsive pedagogy. At its core, place-responsive pedagogy involves the explicit efforts to teach by means of an environment with the aim of understanding and improving human–environment relations. Some implications for teacher professional development are offered.

Keywords:

• environmental education
• place
• nature
• pedagogy
• excursions
• outdoor
• learning
• teacher development
• teacher expertise
• place-responsive

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the reviewers who gave careful and erudite feedback on earlier drafts. Thanks too to SNH who funded the project, Teaching in Nature. A full report and web-site can be found at http://www.snh.gov.uk/publications-data-and-research/publications/search-the-catalogue/publication-detail/?id=1839 and www.teachinginnature.stir.ac.uk/index.html respectively. We acknowledge the work of the teachers on the project (see links) and university colleagues, Ms Clare Nugent, Ms Claire Whewell, Dr John I’Anson and Dr Eric Easton, all of whom worked alongside the authors in various design and data collection phases.

Notes

1. In Scotland, the nature excursion is formally repositioned as one approach to learning beyond the classroom alongside visits to zoos, museums, farms, the urban environment and residential trips to foreign countries. ‘Outdoor learning’ is now used in Scottish policy perhaps to signal an expansion of possible meanings commonly associated with the term ‘outdoor education’ which traditionally had been seen as a form of co-curricular pursuits-focused residential experience using adventure-based experiential approaches to personal and social development.

2. The NNRs of Scotland are in the care and management of SNH, the funder for the project. SNH manage NNRs to serve the primary purpose of conserving natural heritage, but reserves must also ‘provide opportunities for people to visit these special places, come to understand them better and enjoy their natural heritage to the full’ (Scottish Natural Heritage 2003, 4).

3. We use the term ‘novice outdoor’ to refer to teachers who were new to teaching outdoors in nature but may have had extensive experience teaching in more traditional settings. Similarly, ‘experienced outdoor’ refers to those teachers who had regular routines of going out with their pupils.

4. In the end, we collapsed the data on ‘ingredients’ under ‘factors’ since they overlapped and can be disseminated more meaningfully that way.

5. ST stands for secondary teacher. Where teaching stage is not known the code ‘T’ (for teacher) is used. When expertise level is known this is also indicated.

6. PT stands for primary or elementary teacher (ages 5–12).

7. Where teaching stage is not known the code ‘T’ is used to denote a teacher or the word ‘teacher’ is used in text.

8. When expertise level in outdoor facilitation is known (from self-reports) this is also indicated.

9. One teacher, who often used her leisure time to be outdoors, had never taken her pupils outside for learning beyond the school grounds in 15 years of teaching but wished now to change this.