Outdoor environmental education in Sweden

Liljeholmen College, located on the banks of a charming lake close to Rimforsa, was an ideal setting for a Comenius course for teachers about outdoor environmental education, held in August. Situated in the South of Sweden, Rimforsa is in an area surrounded by lakes, meadows, pastures and forests, with observable cultural impacts from the Stone Age to contemporary urbanisation.

The objectives of the course were to work with the outdoor environment as a classroom and teaching media in a cross-cultural perspective.

Research indicates that the most creative environments for learning, developing motor skills and concentration, are unstructured green and variable environments. To increase motivation, outdoor environment education is supplementing the classroom situations with the "extended classroom". In this respect, the playground, school yard, nature, culture, and society itself become as important a learning environment as classrooms. The approach of outdoor environmental education becomes knowledge as an activity.

Sustainable learning must increase hands on and minds on pedagogical activities that visualise and clarify our relations with the landscape. The body and mind have to meet the Earth ("the soul in the soil perspective") to contribute towards a sustainable community and develop a more environmentally conscious attitude towards land use.

Moreover, recent studies point to evidence that more dynamic learning environments and daily physical activity promote health and prevent diseases such as diabetes, obesity, bone-weakness and stress syndrome.

Finally, the ultimate goal of outdoor environmental education and ecological learning is to develop students' awareness and concern about the whole ecosystem and its associated problems.

Outdoor environmental education develops knowledge, attitudes and skills across the whole curriculum - it is knowledge about the environment, developing skills through going out in the environment, which in turn, creates the caring attitudes needed for the environment.

Thirty-eight teachers from 14 European Union member states, including Malta, represented by Marie Louise Asciak (teacher at St Dorothy's Convent School, Zebbug) participated in this course.

The activities ranged from lectures on the theoretical aspects of Outdoor Education to physical activities such as trekking in forests, exploring caves, canoeing and cooking outdoors using "the larder of nature".

Finally, the teachers visited two schools, one in a rural setting at Bjorfors, and another in an urban setting at Kisa, where they could see for themselves various outdoor experiential classes taking place.

Moreover, thanks to this course, which could only be possible through Comenius funding, teachers coming from different school systems could exchange ideas and create a network that would serve not only to foster international understanding but also to create school partnerships working on specific outdoor experiential learning projects.