Take It Outside

Exploring Place-Based Learning and Risk

“If you’re intimate with a place, a place with whose history you’re familiar, and you establish an ethical conversation with it, the implication that follows is this: the place knows you’re there. It feels you. You will not be forgotten, cut off, abandoned.”

Developing daily routines and a sense of place might revolve around creating meeting spaces or a sit spot.
Post World War 2, junk or adventure playgrounds popped up in blighted and blitzed neighbourhoods in a bid to kickstart urban renewal. Children regularly turned bombed sites into spaces to play showing that meaningful connection to places can occur anywhere.

“For Aboriginal peoples, country is much more than a place. Rock, tree, river, hill, animal, human — all were formed of the same substance by the Ancestors who continue to live in land, water, sky. Country is filled with relations speaking language and following Law, no matter whether the shape of that relation is human, rock, crow, wattle. Country is loved, needed, and cared for, and country loves, needs, and cares for her peoples in turn. Country is family, culture, identity. Country is self.” — Seeing the Light: Aboriginal Law, Learning and Sustainable Living in Country.

One of the biggest barriers to taking learning outdoors that educators describe is the need to manage risk, particularly with young learners. This graphic is based on the Four Zones of Outdoor Learning.

--

--

Education blog. "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say" - Flannery O'Connor

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store
Abe Moore

Education blog. "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say" - Flannery O'Connor