An Outdoor Learning Experience - “A Walk in the Park”
Published: 21 April 2021
Dr. Beth Dickson was successful in being awarded funding from the CoSS Graduate School’s PhD internship scheme, which enabled her to employ a PGR student, Catherine Reid, to construct a website called A Walk in the Park
In August 2020 Dr. Beth Dickson was successful in being awarded funding from the CoSS Graduate School’s PhD internship scheme, which enabled her to employ a PGR student, Catherine Reid, to construct a website called A Walk in the Park. The College scheme enables PGR students to learn new skills which will add value to their cvs making them more employable. Before she began her PhD Catherine taught as an English teacher in Coatbridge High School.
The website was designed with a view to enable ITE students to think about the opportunities of outdoor learning during the pandemic. Their work is based on Kelvingrove Park and demonstrates how a civic green space could be used to enable learning by designing experiences for learners. The website has resources on Empire, Environment, Sharing Spaces, Stories.
These resources are aimed at ITE students as adults as well as some resources which could be used in the classroom. Fundamentally their idea was to enable students to make links themselves between the curriculum and broader issues which are more contemporary – e.g. environment/Black Lives Matter. What students need to be able to do is to see CfE not as an end in itself but as the facilitator of what and how they want to teach. (In the meetings they have had with students they have found that they need to chat this over with students as currently students tend to perceive the curriculum as something more prescriptive.) This in turn is more motivating for students as they are more able to teach what they themselves enjoy.
What they are really looking for now is feedback from colleagues. Please have a look at the website and let them know about
- Is it useful?
- What would make it more useful?
- Would you consider using it with any of your ITE classes? Which ones and why?
- In what ways could it be developed?
Anything that crosses the colleagues’ minds as they look over the website would help Dr. Dickson and her team! Particularly anything they think would help to make it more useful for teaching ITE students. Dr. Dickson and her team can be reached at Beth.Dickson@glasgow.ac.uk or c.reid.2@research.gla.ac.uk.
First published: 21 April 2021