Book contents
- Curious About Nature
- Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation
- Curious About Nature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Foreword
- Part I Getting Curious About Nature
- Part II Essays: Inspiring Fieldwork
- 6 Understanding the Decline of Hen Harriers on Orkney
- 7 Rocky Shores Are Not Just for the Able-Bodied
- 8 Life, Love and Longing to Survive
- 9 Bringing Palaeoecology Alive
- 10 Expedition Botany/Hobby Botany
- 11 The Illisarvik Drained-Lake Field Experiment: a Legacy of J. Ross Mackay
- 12 In Praise of Meteorology Field Courses
- 13 Time, Place and Circumstance
- 14 Sampling Fish Diversity along a Submarine Mountain Chain
- 15 Place and Placefulness
- 16 Ripples across the Pond
- 17 Fieldwork, Field-Friends and the Paradox of Absence
- 18 Ornithological Fieldwork: Essential and Enjoyable
- 19 Exploration Science on the Shore of the Arctic Ocean: a Personal Experience
- 20 Only Connect – and Make Records
- 21 Studying Patterned Bogs
- 22 Mapping the Rise of the Animals: Cambrian Bodies in the Sirius Pass, North Greenland
- 23 Evolution in the Cellar: Live-Trapping Wild House Mice in the Italian Alps
- 24 Reflections on ‘Babooning’
- 25 Bogs, Birds and Bones: Interdisciplinary Fieldwork on the Isle of Rum National Nature Reserve
- 26 Exploring World(s) Down Under
- 27 Experiments by Nature: Strength in Realism
- 28 Big Problems – Small Animals
- 29 Soil Survey: a Field-Based Science
- 30 A Travelling Ethnography of Urban Technologies
- 31 My Date with the Devil
- 32 Peregrinations through the Heathlands and Moorlands of Britain: an Applied Plant Ecologist’s Tale
- 33 The Maimai Catchment New Zealand
- 34 ‘Writing in the Field’: the Importance of a Local Patch
- 35 Looking but Not Seeing: How Sketching in the Field Improves Observational Skills in Science
- 36 From Rum to Recording Forest Soils via the Soil Survey of Scotland: a Life of Fieldwork
- 37 In Praise of Bat Detectors
- 38 In Search of Tawny Frogmouths
- 39 Don’t Just Sit There Reading …
- 40 Fieldwork in the Australian Bush: If It Doesn’t Kill You, It’ll Convert You
- 41 Field Studies of Behaviour and Life-Changing Events
- 42 Sediment, Wind Turbines and Rhinos: Ah, the Life of a Geographer!
- 43 Conservation Science: the Need for a New Paradigm Founded on Robust Field Evidence
- 44 The Worst Journey in the World
- 45 Field-less Fieldwork in Archaeology’s Digital Age
- 46 Reflections on a Career with the Field Studies Council
- 47 My Love Affair with Rocks That Fizz
- 48 In the Footsteps of John Wesley Powell: Restoring the Sand Bars in the Grand Canyon
- 49 Connecting the Next Generation to Their World
- 50 Beyond the Curriculum: Wider Conceptions of Learning in the Field
- Part III Reflections and Where Next for Field Studies
- Contributing Author Biographies
- Index
- References
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
- Curious About Nature
- Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation
- Curious About Nature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Foreword
- Part I Getting Curious About Nature
- Part II Essays: Inspiring Fieldwork
- 6 Understanding the Decline of Hen Harriers on Orkney
- 7 Rocky Shores Are Not Just for the Able-Bodied
- 8 Life, Love and Longing to Survive
- 9 Bringing Palaeoecology Alive
- 10 Expedition Botany/Hobby Botany
- 11 The Illisarvik Drained-Lake Field Experiment: a Legacy of J. Ross Mackay
- 12 In Praise of Meteorology Field Courses
- 13 Time, Place and Circumstance
- 14 Sampling Fish Diversity along a Submarine Mountain Chain
- 15 Place and Placefulness
- 16 Ripples across the Pond
- 17 Fieldwork, Field-Friends and the Paradox of Absence
- 18 Ornithological Fieldwork: Essential and Enjoyable
- 19 Exploration Science on the Shore of the Arctic Ocean: a Personal Experience
- 20 Only Connect – and Make Records
- 21 Studying Patterned Bogs
- 22 Mapping the Rise of the Animals: Cambrian Bodies in the Sirius Pass, North Greenland
- 23 Evolution in the Cellar: Live-Trapping Wild House Mice in the Italian Alps
- 24 Reflections on ‘Babooning’
- 25 Bogs, Birds and Bones: Interdisciplinary Fieldwork on the Isle of Rum National Nature Reserve
- 26 Exploring World(s) Down Under
- 27 Experiments by Nature: Strength in Realism
- 28 Big Problems – Small Animals
- 29 Soil Survey: a Field-Based Science
- 30 A Travelling Ethnography of Urban Technologies
- 31 My Date with the Devil
- 32 Peregrinations through the Heathlands and Moorlands of Britain: an Applied Plant Ecologist’s Tale
- 33 The Maimai Catchment New Zealand
- 34 ‘Writing in the Field’: the Importance of a Local Patch
- 35 Looking but Not Seeing: How Sketching in the Field Improves Observational Skills in Science
- 36 From Rum to Recording Forest Soils via the Soil Survey of Scotland: a Life of Fieldwork
- 37 In Praise of Bat Detectors
- 38 In Search of Tawny Frogmouths
- 39 Don’t Just Sit There Reading …
- 40 Fieldwork in the Australian Bush: If It Doesn’t Kill You, It’ll Convert You
- 41 Field Studies of Behaviour and Life-Changing Events
- 42 Sediment, Wind Turbines and Rhinos: Ah, the Life of a Geographer!
- 43 Conservation Science: the Need for a New Paradigm Founded on Robust Field Evidence
- 44 The Worst Journey in the World
- 45 Field-less Fieldwork in Archaeology’s Digital Age
- 46 Reflections on a Career with the Field Studies Council
- 47 My Love Affair with Rocks That Fizz
- 48 In the Footsteps of John Wesley Powell: Restoring the Sand Bars in the Grand Canyon
- 49 Connecting the Next Generation to Their World
- 50 Beyond the Curriculum: Wider Conceptions of Learning in the Field
- Part III Reflections and Where Next for Field Studies
- Contributing Author Biographies
- Index
- References
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.
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- Curious about NatureA Passion for Fieldwork, pp. 356 - 362Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020