Hi everybody!
I am Giusi, and I present my doctoral project “Eden, Educational Environments with Nature”. Toward an interdisciplinary green curriculum. My work is part of the pon projects funded by the European Union to promote the reduction of climate change impacts and a sustainable world. The subtitle, I hope, offers a glimpse into the broad question the general question guiding the work: can we learn from plants and with plants?
The objectives pursued by my work are twofold but intertwined: re-qualifying educational environments, which are too often distant and incoherent with the 'taught' educational models; the second is to promote, through such requalification, the re-engagement with the plant world, through research that investigates how the establishment of university indoor educational environments with plants and the creation of an interdisciplinary green and co-constructed curriculum (IGCC), can foster active relationships with them and the development of GreenComp in preservice teachers.
What I am interested in understanding is how these environments are experienced by the academic community and, above all, how to activate those who inhabit them to actively participate in their life. In other words, how to constitute interspecific educational environments.
There are many reasons for this, ranging from climate change to the presence of complex phenomena such as plant blindness to issues related to the relationship between human and non-human beings. There are also deeply pedagogical reasons: we learn when we feel good, when we feel motivated when we participate. A World-Centred education recalls these elements and considers the whole world, including plants, as educating subjects. Based on this educational philosophy, the learning proposed by the project is transformative. Bringing together, indeed, the distinctive traits of ecopedagogy, a critical approach to teaching and learning about the connections between environmental and social problems, and of ecodidactics, an ecologically oriented didactics in form and content, what comes to life is an interdisciplinary educational environment in which through experiential, creative, playful and reflective activities, new competencies has been and is being created. that place sustainability at the center. A central element of the project is that we are educators of students, citizens of the world. It is to them, and their educators, that the project is addressed.
Actually, the research started with the establishment of three higher educational environments with plants, one in Italy and one in Switzerland, where a classroom has been redesigned and set up by a group of administrative-librarian-academics, which now sees a cooperative setting and the presence of plants The plants are not aesthetic elements, but part of the educating community. How?
Starting last year, a process of rethinking the curriculum for pre-school teachers was initiated, acting on the syllabi of those who joined the project and collegially creating activities that focused on the human-plant relationship and could foster the GreenComp of the students.
Students were involved in activities coming from all the disciplines involved: General Didactic, General Pedagogy, Educational Sciences, Didactics of Biology and Chemistry, Didactic of Ecology, Psychology of Education, Didactic of Geography; and Didactic of Italian. We put the plant at the center of the didactic approach and interact with them as pedagogical subjects!
Do you want to know the activities? Like my project to explore a new world
The process is now continuing and is being enriched by new entries to the working group, with the aim of extending collaboration with other Universities. In addition, several local schools are taking inspiration from our idea by creating these environments. What we hope for is a request, from those who would like to try this experience, to collaborate with us, to enrich the research, and to offer interested teachers input and support.
Let's go green together :)
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