In light of the literature that deals with challenges of outdoor education, this paper presents exemplary practices in field trips to natural environments. We offer an analysis of 62 field trips of students in grades 4-8 (age 10-14), guided by professional guides or by teachers. In aiming at elucidating the qualities of exemplary fieldtrips, we analyze five examples of high quality field trips. Each of the five was exemplary in several aspects, but not necessarily in all. Data were collected though observations and interviews with teachers, guides and students. Interpretative analysis was used in addition to an analytic framework that we developed previously. In general, we stress that good collaboration between the guide and the teacher, who enact active learning and psychomotor activity, and make much use of the environment for student exploration and interaction, are the key to high quality outdoor learning experiences. We provide several examples to support this claim. Other aspects we highlight are a sense of freedom, time and opportunity to enjoy nature and the opportunities to have meaningful social interactions. In light of the prevalent critique toward current outdoor education practice, we suggest the research community learn from good practices. What is good practice in outdoor teaching? How might we recognize it? What are its specific characteristics? We keep asking these questions, realizing how complex the learning experience we study is and acknowledging that the answer is not simple. Since we ask the questions with reference to guided school visits that our research group studied in the last decade, we focus on the broad question of how to understand, frame and design outdoor learning that corresponds with school-based learning. We use a systemic approach to outdoor learning that considers as many variables as possible that affect the quality of the activity and its outcomes. These variables include (1) the context-the school curriculum, the physical environment, the group's background and so forth; (2) the pedagogy and the agents who implement this pedagogy-teachers, field guides, the students and their interest, and (3) the content of the field trip. Although there is much literature that describes challenges and misuse of outdoor education experiences, we believe that the contribution of this body of literature to identifying high quality practices is limited. We already know much of what's wrong, but we know little of what works. In this paper we used a different approach than we used in previous studies by attempting to identify, present and discuss high quality practices of outdoor education, by looking at how the interplay between different aspects
Understanding volunteers' motivations to participate in Citizen Science (CS) projects is essential for these projects' effective management and success. Many studies have investigated citizen scientists' motivations, but only a few have used a theory-based approach to provide a standardized methodology to measure CS motivations. The current research aims to take the literature a step further by developing and applying a general, standardized, theory-based framework of CS motivation and a CS motivation scale (CSMS) that can be used to assess volunteers' motivations across diverse CS projects. The CSMS comprises 58 items corresponding to 15 motivational categories. It is grounded in Schwartz's theory of basic human values, while incorporating the wealth of empirical knowledge on citizen scientists' motivations. We administered the scale to three separate samples of either Dutch or Hebrew-speaking participants who volunteered for three CS projects. Analysis of participants' ratings of their motivations supported our theoretical framework, showing that 13 of the scale's 15 motivational categories fell into 4 higherorder motivations, which correspond to Schwartz's theory of values: openness to change, self-enhancement, continuity (conservation), and self-transcendence. Results further provide concrete insights into CS participation behavior, showing that certain motivations (including help with research, benevolence, and self-direction) were consistently among the most important motivators for participation across CS projects. Finally, we found that prioritizing certain motivations can also predict participation behavior (e.g., duration of participation and willingness to participate in additional volunteering activities). The CSMS is a new tool that can be applied across projects spanning diverse domains and populations, advancing and standardizing the growing literature on CS motivations. design, data analysis, and writing. Anne Land-Zandstra contributed to the conception, data collection, and writing. Nirit Lavie-Alon contributed to the data collection and writing. Assaf Shwartz contributed to the conception, design, and writing.
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