TY - JOUR
T1 - Laying down a path in walking
T2 - student teachers’ emerging ecological identities
AU - Gray, Donald Stuart
AU - Colucci-Gray, Laura
N1 - We would like to thank the three reviewers who provided insightful commentary and useful suggestions for engaging with the complex and contested conceptualisations integrated into this study. Sitting at the intersection of current theoretical and methodological paradigms, their feedback has been extremely useful in taking our own thinking forward. We thank them wholeheartedly.
PY - 2019/6/6
Y1 - 2019/6/6
N2 - There is growing global awareness of the importance of what are often labelled as ‘natural environments’ for human health, well-being and cognitive development. However, fostering learning in such ‘natural environments’, as they may be differently experienced and understood, requires a review of theoretical and practical approaches in teacher education, foregrounding the sensorial, experiential, embodied and relational dimensions of learning processes. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on the experiences of a group of first year undergraduate student teachers enrolled in a newly introduced course on outdoor learning. Adopting a pragmatic and enactivist mixed methods approach, the study provides evidence of impact of the course on the students. Specifically, the study contributes a qualitative description of student teachers’ learning trajectories, featuring what students deemed to be significant moments of an emerging ecological awareness. Findings point to important implications for curriculum and pedagogy, promoting environmental consciousness in formal teacher education contexts.
AB - There is growing global awareness of the importance of what are often labelled as ‘natural environments’ for human health, well-being and cognitive development. However, fostering learning in such ‘natural environments’, as they may be differently experienced and understood, requires a review of theoretical and practical approaches in teacher education, foregrounding the sensorial, experiential, embodied and relational dimensions of learning processes. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on the experiences of a group of first year undergraduate student teachers enrolled in a newly introduced course on outdoor learning. Adopting a pragmatic and enactivist mixed methods approach, the study provides evidence of impact of the course on the students. Specifically, the study contributes a qualitative description of student teachers’ learning trajectories, featuring what students deemed to be significant moments of an emerging ecological awareness. Findings point to important implications for curriculum and pedagogy, promoting environmental consciousness in formal teacher education contexts.
KW - outdoor learning
KW - ecological identity
KW - nature connectedness
KW - enactivism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85057591000&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.mendeley.com/research/laying-down-path-walking-student-teachers-emerging-ecological-identities
U2 - 10.1080/13504622.2018.1499014
DO - 10.1080/13504622.2018.1499014
M3 - Article
VL - 25
SP - 341
EP - 364
JO - Environmental Education Research
JF - Environmental Education Research
SN - 1350-4622
IS - 3
ER -