Delivering subject content through nine life themes
This coming Monday – 22 April – is Earth Day, an annual event that aims to highlight the importance of protecting the environment, engage the public and push green issues up the political agenda, nationally and internationally. The theme for 2024 is ‘Planet vs Plastics’. Previous Earth Days have covered issues from climate change and clean energy to protecting species and the benefits of tree planting. “Celebrating Earth Day is often the first environmental action for a lot of people,” the BBC quotes Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, as saying. The aims of Earth Day chime with those of Life-Based Learning, and fieldwork and outdoor learning are great ways for children to experience nature and the environment.
We have focused in recent blogs on time spent in – and interacting with – nature. We believe that it is something to be encouraged, promoted and supported. At the heart of Life-Based Learning (LBL) is the belief that children and young people need to be learning about and, crucially, experiencing nature and the environment in a thorough and systematic way.
Earlier this month we highlighted new survey evidence indicating that children want to spend more time in nature but need better access. We also featured a response to the survey from the chief executive of the Geographical Association (GA), Steve Brace, who talked about how young people can be supported to get into nature at a local level.
LBL is highly critical of the national curriculum for England but there is no arguing with the opening sentence of the geography section: “A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.”
The GA says this on its website:
Fieldwork (whether local, residential or international) is an essential component of geography education. It enables pupils to better understand the ‘messiness’ of ‘geographical reality’, develop subject knowledge, and gain a range of skills that are difficult to develop in the classroom alone.
However, the value is not simply the ‘geographical’ value of experiencing such things as landscape features, busy urban streets and unfamiliar cultures which helps ground the pupils’ local environment in the context of the global. It also aids motivation and self-development.
The GA’s website includes lots of information and resources for teachers about doing fieldwork. Unfortunately, it is for members only but there is also a useful free resource written by Paula Richardson who argues the case for outdoor learning and suggests ways in which fieldwork can be made more manageable for early years and primary teachers.
There is also some free advice for teachers in primary schools on planning fieldwork experiences published by the Royal Geographical Society on its website.
A key premise of LBL is the need to free ourselves from an obsession with subject-based learning, which throws up barriers between one subject and the next, limiting our ability to think flexibly and our freedom to go wherever the learning takes us, exploring the world in creative and imaginative ways. Much of importance is inevitably lost in the interstices between one subject and the next: if it isn’t in a programme of study or an exam specification, it might not even get covered – and certainly not in any detail.
There are lots of schemes and awards that encourage children to interact with and enjoy nature and the environment.
We have highlighted in previous blogs, for example, the fantastic work done by the Royal Horticultural Society, an organisation that does much to encourage young people to connect with nature, not least through its fantastic Campaign for School Gardening scheme and other exciting initiatives.
The John Muir Award is run by the John Muir Trust, named after a nineteenth-century Scottish-born naturalist. It is aimed at children from roughly the age of eight upwards and is based around four challenges: Discover, Explore, Conserve and Share. There is also a Family Award that welcomes involvement of all ages and abilities as part of a family group.
At the moment, the award is being redesigned and refreshed to mark twenty-five years since it was launched. A relaunch is expected in 2025, so the website is well worth bookmarking and keeping an eye on.
Their website highlights other award schemes that enable children and young people to experience and explore nature and the environment, including:
Life-Based Learning (LBL) aims to ensure that:
Image at the head of this article by 철민 박 from Pixabay.
