Lesson 15 provides instructions on how to build on Eduscape lessons 1-14 and continue with the project based on place-based education and active participation.
Eduscape materials can serve as a departure point for children's participation in areas related to the environment closest to them. Participation is an elementary right in the civil democratic society. It can be described as a process of joint decision-making in matters that influence the life of an individual and society. Among the issues subject to participation is the quality of our environment. This lesson is an inspiration to draw pupils' attention to the environment around us and to awaken their active interest in its shape and functioning.
The Eduscape project aims for a constructive approach to problematic issues related to landscape and the impacts of climate change and searches for possible solutions. The final unit – Unit 15 – offers inspiration and practical advice on deepening the knowledge students have gained in previous units. For this purpose, it uses the form of project teaching, which builds on the methods of place-based learning and moves them further towards active involvement (participation) of pupils in shaping the environment they live in. This concept allows students to explore the material more thoroughly with concrete examples in a setting they are familiar with while motivating them to take an active approach to public space design.
Students can use the knowledge gained from Eduscape in their daily lives and acquire a deeper knowledge of “their” landscape as they focus on individual topics. Students are motivated to look at the world around them from a different perspective and become aware of connections and links that escaped their attention until then. They learn new facts, enlarge their scope and can reflect and express their opinion on how “their” landscape functions, what issues it deals with and what are the possible solutions. Students deepen their relationship with the landscape they live in; it can also be an opportunity to become aware of their relationship to the landscape and re-form it. When getting involved in the environment they live in, students automatically consider it more “theirs” and are more willing to participate in its maintenance and renewal, which is exactly what the cultural landscape needs at the time of climate change: it needs citizens who understand its importance and are willing and ready to actively participate in its renewal and future prosperity.
The unit presents a selection of activities that proved useful in children and young people’s involvement in the process of landscape and public space design. The accompanying text offers teachers a framework for this process and practical tips and advice on how to do it.
Pupils will:
The ongoing climate change brings unexpected challenges. We can mitigate the impacts of climate change and help the landscape, and ourselves, to adapt. To do so, we need to understand the importance of the role landscape plays in our lives and relate to it. This unit aims to provide a short guidebook on how to use Eduscape themes to strengthen students’ relationship with the place they live in and motivate them to get involved – be it in a limited way – in the protection of the landscape.
Students use a blank sheet of paper or a blind map and draw/fill in the area in question as they remember it. Each map is individual and tells about the physical state of the location as well as the author’s relationship to it.
Students work outdoors, mapping the designated area into blind/simplified maps. Findings are discussed in a group.
Based on the knowledge they have acquired about the area, students define its strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of the problem they deal with. Older students can also focus on opportunities and threats.
Students mark places they consider as positive/negative/with the greatest potential for change etc. in the map of the area. This activity can be done alongside the SWOT analysis (Activity 3).
Students compare the materials collected and analyses made. In group discussion, they define the “problems” they want to focus on in the final phase of designing. They formulate the “assignment”.
The work on a specific proposal of change/improvement has better results if the process is well structured and runs according to pre-defined rules. The WHO-WHAT-HOW method is simple, easy to understand and efficient.
Drawing a proposed solution on a photograph of the area enables participants to show their solution clearly and efficiently. It also makes it easy to experiment with several versions of solutions and compare one’s ideas with those of the others.
Students create a 3D model of their proposed solution.