Outdoor learning from local to global

At the start of the project, an analysis was conducted with students and teachers at our school to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education. According to the results, students e...

At the start of the project, an analysis was conducted with students and teachers at our school to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education. According to the results, students expressed a strong preference for having lessons outdoors. However, it was observed that teachers lacked the necessary skills to implement outdoor education effectively. In response, our school aimed to address this issue on an international level by collaborating with other institutions in the European Union. Through this, we aimed to improve our teachers' competencies in outdoor education. Additionally, we set the following objectives for our project: * To enable our teachers to specialise in outdoor education. * To help our teachers gain experience in outdoor education through international cooperation. To develop teachers’ competencies to implement outdoor education in our schools. * To support our schools in applying innovative teaching and learning methods. * To promote students’ academic, social, and psychological development. * To explore the practical benefits and risks of outdoor education. * To enhance knowledge of outdoor education both locally and internationally.

We implemented 6 activities in our project. 4 of these activities were mobility activities, 1 was a virtual meeting activity and 1 was a dissemination activity. The activities implemented in the project are as follows. 1) Academic Studies Activity: In this activity, knowledge and skills were gained about the academic research conducted in outdoor education at local, national and international levels. 2) Space Design Activity: space design methods for outdoor-based learning, which spaces can be used and methods for selecting appropriate spaces were learned. 3) Outdoor Education Practice Activity: difficulties encountered in the outdoor education process were addressed, and teachers' skills in outdoor education lesson processing were improved. 4) Student Motivation Activity: It was taught how extracurricular activities affect students and how to motivate them. 5) Virtual Activity: In our mobility activities, the completion of the missing trainings and the resolution of the problems encountered in practice were ensured. 6) Dissemination Activity: In order for our project to achieve its aims and objectives, the activities to be carried out locally, dissemination activities and the management area of ​​the project were planned.

The aims and objectives included in the content of our project have been achieved. In this context, firstly, the forms specified in the project were applied to teachers and students. The concrete results achieved are as follows. * The teachers' application of outdoor education in their lessons (according to the results of the applied forms) has increased from 12% to 76% in one year. * The skill levels of teachers in outdoor education have increased from 57% to 87%. * The rate of students who stated that they were bored with the lessons at school and the place where the lessons were taught (classroom) has decreased from 71% to 15%. At the same time, the following activities were carried out as concrete outputs with the partner schools in our project. * In our project, a book was created about what outdoor education is and the implementation stages and distributed to all stakeholders. You can access the created product from the attachments section. * Sample outdoor lesson plans were created jointly for all teachers to use in our project and distributed to all stakeholders. * An Android phone application for outdoor education was produced with partner schools. * A book of articles with ISBN number has been produced.