Browsing by Subject "outdoor education"
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Item Drawing knowledge from the experience: Students' understandings of ecosystems before and after a short field experience(2019-12) Kamesch, HallieHuman activities are increasingly and profoundly altering many of the processes and subsystems that make up the Earth System, upon which we depend for life. In order to enable citizens to make responsible environmental decisions, it is necessary to empower them with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand the connections between themselves and the ecological processes and systems with which they interact. A first step toward thinking globally about the Earth system is thinking locally about familiar ecosystems; students need opportunities to engage with ecosystems in ways that help them develop sophisticated understandings of ecosystems as complex systems of interacting abiotic and biotic components. The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to illuminate the phenomenon of students’ understandings of ecosystems and how those understandings changed after a short field study. Participants were 27 fifth-grade students from three schools visiting a local Ecological Research Station during a school field-trip. Data consisted of students’ drawings and written descriptions of ecosystems elicited through a drawing task implemented immediately before and after a field experience. Research has demonstrated that both long-term field experiences and learning units that provide students with explicit frameworks for how to think about ecosystems positively influence student knowledge about ecosystems (eg. Assaraf & Orion, 2010; Hmelo-Silver, Marathe, & Liu, 2007; Kenyan, Assaraf, & Goldman 2014). This study investigates the influence of a short-term (90-minute) out-of-classroom field experience that does not explicitly teach how to think about an ecosystem, but instead engages students in the scientific practices of gathering data and making data-based statements (observations/comparisons). Results of quantitative and qualitative analyses illustrate the ways students’ understandings of ecosystems changed. This study provides information about the type and duration of experiences that can cultivate students’ development of increasingly sophisticated understandings of ecosystems and thus lay the foundation for future learning.Item Natural Partners: Learning From Young Students’ Writing After Science Lessons Outdoors(2022-11) Jennerjohn, AnnaIn a time when learning is increasingly moving to the digital world, extinction of hands-on experiences is becoming endemic for young students. Children need real-life experiences for optimal development and learning. Nature, when conceptualized as the third educator beyond the parent and teacher in the Reggio Emilia philosophies, can be an important partner in real-life learning and offers benefits for children’s intellectual, social, emotional, and physical well-being. This study examines how the return to real-life learning with nature as the third educator impacts educational outcomes and child experiences. Specifically, the study uses mixed methods to explore what happens when science lessons in a public school are moved outdoors for young children, focusing on the outcomes for student writing fluency for less-developed and/or emergent multilingual writers. The study employs repeated measures to compare writing fluency after indoor and outdoor science lessons for sixty-seven students, framed by a mosaic of qualitative data collected from four focal students exploring how they experience the outdoor learning environment. Quantitative findings indicate no statistically significant difference for student writing fluency between indoor and outdoor conditions, meaning that children’s writing fluency flourishes similarly indoors and outdoors. The qualitative data from focal students provide support for taking science lessons outside, including reports of increased opportunities for movement, the availability of nature objects that enhance science learning (i.e., loose parts), and chances to employ positive self-directed play within and between lessons. This research adds to the small number of studies examining the intersections of nature-based learning and literacy for young children. Critically, the finding that outdoor lessons do not detract from students’ writing production removes one mental barrier preventing teachers from taking their students outside, thereby affording students the expanded opportunities for social, emotional, and physical growth that nature provides.Item Randall Outdoor Education Project.(1992) Nelson, Craig