{"id":6673,"date":"2016-05-30T06:12:40","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T06:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6673"},"modified":"2016-05-30T06:12:40","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T06:12:40","slug":"learning-outside-the-classroom-in-local-natural-environments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/05\/30\/learning-outside-the-classroom-in-local-natural-environments\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning outside the classroom in local natural environments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I've been reading a draft of the\u00a0<em>Natural Connections<\/em> Final Report which is a whopping 91 pages \u2013 almost as long as the evaluation proforma\u00a0that Natural England suggested I use to provide my comments on the draft. \u00a0Needless to say, I should not really\u00a0comment\u00a0on what I've seen\u00a0as it's only a draft and, like fate, is amenable to change. \u00a0Well, I hope it is.<\/p>\n<p>Helpfully, though whether this was deliberate or not is unclear, the draft that was circulated contained embedded comments by reviewers. \u00a0Some of these were just as interesting as the report.<\/p>\n<p>One of them \u2013 it will hardly be a surprise to anyone \u2013 was about nomenclature; that is, whether \"LINE\" would be meaningful to anyone outwith the cognoscenti. \u00a0I'd say the answer's obvious. \u00a0Would \"outdoor learning\" be better, someone wondered. \u00a0Well, maybe! \u00a0I've tried this jargon on some of those mercifully not corralled\u00a0in 'the field' and they all asked me whether it was being <em>outside<\/em> that really mattered, or was it\u00a0<em>what<\/em> you learned, or did it depend on how <em>natural<\/em> the natural environment was, or was it pedagogy that really mattered. \u00a0\u00a0And there's the rub, as no one can ever decide. \u00a0It's hardly surprising as\u00a0the phrase \"learning outside the classroom in local natural environments\" covers such a huge range of activities \u2013 including, presumably, sitting in a garden whilst being indoctrinated. \u00a0Can you become a more effective terrorist by learning outside or inside? \u00a0Does anyone know? \u00a0Not that it matters.<\/p>\n<p>I also\u00a0wondered whether the report was trying to reach too many audiences. \u00a0I felt\u00a0it might\u00a0be hard going for anyone who wants to cut to the chase and identify the nuggets that might improve practice and organisation \u2013 if there are any. \u00a0These seem to be buried inside a technical report in which a lot of space is taken by explaining and justifying what <em>Natural Connections<\/em> did \/ didn\u2019t do. \u00a0 I found this tedious. \u00a0Even the executive summary is 7 pages long and itself could do with a summary with practice in mind. \u00a0I'm told this is in hand.<\/p>\n<p>The final report will be published to coincide with the <em>Natural Connections<\/em> launch on the 14th July. \u00a0I'm not going to this as I have no faith in NC's\u00a0ability to organise a meeting\u00a0effectively. \u00a0Anyway, I've already taken up too much space in this blog complaining about past efforts\u00a0\u2013 and there's always my blood pressure to think about. \u00a0A day of calm on the Wiltshire Downs suggests itself as an alternative. \u00a0See you there, maybe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I've been reading a draft of the\u00a0Natural Connections Final Report which is a whopping 91 pages \u2013 almost as long as the evaluation proforma\u00a0that Natural England suggested I use to provide my comments on the draft. \u00a0Needless to say, I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}