From the class to the forest. An explorative research at primary school
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7346/sird-012021-p129Keywords:
outdoor education; primary school; forest school, school effectiveness; evaluative research.Abstract
Recently, the experiences and reflections regarding outdoor education in schools have been gradually spreading in Italy. Despite a quite ancient history and a favourable climate in many areas of the country, outdoor education is not yet widespread and primarily limited to pre-school, often in the private sector. To overcome this limitation, a pilot outdoor project was tested in a primary school to verify its effectiveness in terms of disciplinary and transversal skills development. The research adopted an exploratory evaluation research approach and used a variety of both quantitative and qualitative tools and procedures. School sessions in the forest focused on Italian language contents were observed and questionnaires on school well-being, parallel school tests, and, for the second class, also the results of the Invalsi tests were analysed. Interesting data emerged, especially from a qualitative point of view, as already demonstrated by many studies carried out at the European level, regarding the support of learning processes. No significant results emerged from the point of view of the discipline in the classes involved in the project, above all due to the impossibility of guaranteeing children regular sessions in the forest.
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