Educating the educators – primary teacher education

This chapter looks at the experiences of teacher education at the primary level. The authors start with acknowledging the impact that increasingly urbanized environments are having on the lives of children. Life is dominated by computer culture and virtual worlds, and play and movement tends to be rigidly structured. Experiences in nature are becoming less frequent for children, and so are their possibilities for autonomous movement (on foot, by bicycle), for choosing one’s own friends and for freely organized play. At the same time, few courses in environmental education appear in university curricula, and those that do are often considered as add-on courses, often of a normative and prescriptive character. If a more ecological approach in education is needed, then teachers at the primary level have, perhaps more than at any other level, the possibility of developing a more holistic approach to learning in which science education can be an important tool in reconnecting people with nature. This raises important questions with regard to teachers’ knowledge and their formative experiences. Drawing on the methodological foundations described in Chapter 6, this chapter describes activities in which the life and earth sciences can provide the context for raising the perception of oneself in relation to a deep interdependence with nature. Direct experiences in nature and a refl exive approach develop awareness of natural systems’ capacity for self-regulation and of the multiple impacts of human actions. A refl ective dialog is therefore initiated with beginning teachers on the potential for learning that is embedded in outdoor activities: these can become the nucleus for the organization of sustainable curriculum and pedagogy in primary education toward a scenario in which children can become effective constructors of sustainable worlds.