Aeolis participates as a partner in the "Sharing Landscapes" project. Its main aim is to improve the quality and reinforce the European dimension of adults' experiential education through learning in the outdoors. This will be done through the dissemination of an interdisciplinary material based on landscape interpretation and outdoor experiential education.
The method addresses issues of teaching outside the classroom; in an urban, rural, local or global context. It will develop the idea of a "spatial literacy" aimed at helping adult learners "read" the "grammar" of a landscape; cultural, social, historical and environmental.
A major part of the method recognizes that both images and spatial literacy are coming to supplant words as the primary communication medium (the so-called 'iconic turn'), this has not led to an integration of the study of the medium into education at large.
The resulting products will be:
1. A survey/anthology of essays/best practice/"how to do" on various methods for outdoor experiential education for adults.
2. An interdisciplinary eLearning hub of educational exercises for adults.
3. Teacher notes translated into Swedish, Spanish, German, French, Greek and Turkish
4. An interdisciplinary course/curriculum to be run through Grundtvig teacher training workshops
5. Courses integrated into the partner institutions
6. A mentoring system for future adult educators who wish to apply the outdoor education tools
The main principles of liberal adult education for this project are based upon experiential learning and active teaching methods. Adults are learners with a strong motivation, as a rule, but this does not apply from the beginning to the end of all courses they attend. They need to be motivated and undertake active role(s) in every training process. Outdoor education is the antidote to boring lectures where knowledge is communicated through passive ways and experiential learning has a long tradition (P. Freire et al) for empowering adults to undertake active role in society. These tools are the best possible ways to motivate adults. The combination of experiential learning principles together with outdoor landscapes will provide learners and teachers with self-confidence and joy. An interdisciplinary approach offers an inextricable tool to integrate various learning styles and to offer all learners and their teachers a learning experience with knowledge, skills and competences adapted to their own needs.
The project is innovative in several respects:
• The interdisciplinary approach
. The informal learning approach
• The aim to take learning outdoors
. The focus on experiencial learning
. The use of all elements of nature and environment, (man-made and natural) as tools
• Including experiential learning in tandem with traditional methods
• The mixed-delivery mode, i.e. using printed materials in the form of a published anthology together with an ELearning site and the preparation of a course;
• The incorporation of a wide variety of approaches for enhancing people's observation skills and increasing their understanding of cultural variation; through the study of language and landscape in the outdoors
• The inclusion of intercultural aspects in pedagogical and didactic guidelines
• The creating and testing of an "internationally aware" training materials to see if they are equally accessible, usable and understandable for a Europe-wide audience
• The Transfer of innovative approaches from one country to another
Partnership include: Tinta Utbildning Ab, a daughter company of ABF North Greater Stockholm. ABF is Sweden's longest established company for public education for adults (coordinator of the project); Research House UK a provider of research, evaluation, project management and specialized in e-learning services; Grampus Heritage and Training Limited, from the UK too, an organisation that works on Cultural Heritage, Archaeology and Traditional skills and techniques training; Elderberry Ab, from Sweden, that undertakes development and strategic studies on socio-cultural and urban implications; and Pamukkale University, which will produce educational material for adult learners on Interpreting an Archealogical Landscape, based on the UNESCO worls heritage site of Hierapolis.
