An Approach to Prospective Primary School Teachers’ Concept of Environment and Biodiversity through their Design of Educational Itineraries: Validation of an Evaluation Rubric

Abstract

<jats:p>The aim of this work is to promote outdoor activities to bring students closer to the environment and the biodiversity of their surroundings. In this sense, educational itineraries are a very good educational resource that promotes skills developing (scientific, cartographic, educational, etc.) which are necessary for the appropriate design of teaching proposals. The present study is carried out with the prospective primary teachers from the Universities of Sevilla and Huelva (Spain). Firstly, the purpose is to analyse what type of educational itineraries they can design after an outdoor activity. Secondly, a rubric is validated as an instrument of analysis and evaluation immersed in a qualitative methodology. The results show what kind of itineraries are designed, and what knowledge and conceptual difficulties the students display. Most of them do not recognize the minimal of elements making up the itineraries, and have difficulties in understanding the environment as a complex system. In summary, we think that the students’ lacking of knowledge about the environment and its biodiversity, the poor geographic-cartographic competencies that they have, together with their maintenance of traditional conceptions of teaching, do not allow them to design proposals of interest for teaching-learning processes.</jats:p>

The Learning to Learn Competence in Early Childhood Preservice Teachers: An Outdoor and e/m-Learning Experience in the Museum

“…In this sense, outdoor education encourages this type of experiential learning [3,6,35]. For this reason, the teaching situation under which this research is carried out is an outdoor experience aimed at developing the learning to learn competence.…”

“…The complexity and the changing world, combined with its new socio-scientific issues, have created the need to enforce the education of our population [1,2]. The recent global health crisis caused by COVID-19 and the climate emergency are a few examples of the consequences of the environmental imbalance and socio-environmental problems in the world today [3,4]. For this reason, one of the current challenges of the educational system is to provide people with proper tools that will allow them to face this changing reality.…”

A Conceptual Model for Developing Climate Education in Sustainability Management Education System

“…For example Solís-Espallargas and Morón-Monge describe how to improve sustainability competences of teacher training on the basis of inquiring [40]. Morón-Monge et al present an approach to prospective primary school teachers' concepts of environment and biodiversity through their design of educational itineraries [41]. Other authors mostly focus on selected problems and research findings in sustainability in education at the pre-school level [31,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] and K-12 level [50][51][52][53] in various countries.…”

“…We claim that each stage should be associated with a corresponding approach to climate education. Climate education should not only concentrate on knowledge development but, first of all, should shape the value system and an ability to take actions to benefit the climate [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][61][62][63][64]83,[89][90][91]. Our conceptual model postulates that the systemic change in education should reflect these four stages.…”

“…A need also exists to connect gaps and disconnects between ethics, awareness, intention, beliefs, commitments and action [4]. Concepts such as comparative risks and trade-offs are often integral to addressing environmental concerns, but these ideas are new to many teachers [40,41,93].…”