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50 - Beyond the Curriculum: Wider Conceptions of Learning in the Field

from Part II - Essays: Inspiring Fieldwork

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2020

Tim Burt
Affiliation:
Durham University
Des Thompson
Affiliation:
Scottish Natural Heritage
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Summary

While we often talk about ‘the curriculum’ – as I have done in the title of this chapter – there is, in fact, no one curriculum, but many, given life by the passions of educators and the places that we visit. In fact, it might even be argued that the most important facets of learning in the field come from the spontaneity and emergent experiences which arise in relationship with the places we visit with our students. While the impetus for fieldwork is provided by a preconceived notion of what is important and what should be learnt (i.e. ‘the curriculum’), it is demonstrated that these wider conceptions of learning are also important for learners. Interaction with the environment, with each other, and reflections on personal experiences, can elicit considerable learning and – on occasion – produce transformative, and disruptive, moments, which resonate into young people’s lives and which crucially have the power to contribute to a citizenship capable of environmentally and socially responsible decision-making (Selby and Kagawa, 2015; Jickling, 2017). This, it might seem, is an extraordinary ask for fieldwork – but we live in extraordinary times. The generation studying GCSEs and A-levels1 today face great changes and uncertainty.

Type
Chapter
Information
Curious about Nature
A Passion for Fieldwork
, pp. 356 - 362
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, 179211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Hargreaves, T. (2011). Practice-ing behaviour change: applying social practice theory to pro-environmental behaviour change. Journal of Consumer Culture 11, 7999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hungerford, H. R. and Volk, T. L. (1990). Changing learner behavior through environmental education. Journal of Environmental Education 21, 821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jickling, B. (2017). Education revisited: creating educational experiences that are held, felt, and disruptive. In Post-Sustainability and Environmental Education, eds. Jickling, B. and Sterling, S. Springer, Berlin, pp. 1530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selby, D. and Kagawa, F. (2015). Drawing threads together: a critical and transformative agenda for sustainability education. In Sustainability Frontiers, eds. Selby, D and Kagawa, F. Barbara Budrich, Toronto, pp. 277280.Google Scholar

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