In recent years, a predominant narrative was established about 21st-century children who choose poor-quality leisure activities, and are often occupied exclusively indoors with their tablets and staring at telephone screens. As a result, their physical activity decreases and their fine motor skills deteriorate. Sitting during lectures at school every day is also not helpful with increasing activity. Teachers try to keep up with technological development as they replace overhead projectors, slide projectors and green boards with PCs and other intelligent devices, such as smart-blackboards and tablets. May we look at a public or a private school, in both teachers are confronted with innovations and changes when it comes to teaching aids and methods. Private schools have the advantage of being able to distribute their financial resources freely so they are known to be better equipped than their public counterparts, who are obliged to follow public procurement procedures. However, differences in equipment can also be observed among public schools. Another challenge teachers face is the science subjects in the first three years of school, which must be designed in such a way that motivates the pupils and makes them active throughout the entire lesson. After examining the curriculum, it can be concluded that the vast majority of all topics, experiments and goals can be successfully achieved outside the classroom. More than ever before, schools play an important role in providing the pupils with a wide range of outdoor experiences, exploring and actively experiencing nature. The topic of the master’s thesis was outdoor teaching and learning for this purpose.
The aim of this empirical study was to find out whether and how often Slovenian teachers teach science outdoors and whether there are significant differences between public and private schools. Furthermore, we investigated which outdoor locations are used by teachers and what (dis)advantages, challenges and obstacles are observed in outdoor science teaching. Teachers were also asked to give their personal assessment of the equipment in public and private schools, along with an assessment of their own competence in conducting outdoor science classes and ways to maintain their skills in conducting and planning outdoor science classes. A qualitative empirical study was carried out, involving 96 teachers of the first three years (17 teachers teaching in private and 79 teachers teaching in public primary school). The data were collected by means of an online questionnaire containing closed, combined and open tasks.
The results of empirical research show that teachers in private schools are more likely to teach outdoors than their public counterparts. Moreover, the locations of outdoor classes differ, as private schools offer more diverse locations than public primary schools. However, teachers at public and private schools tend to name similar challenges, shortcomings or limitations in conducting outdoor science classes. In general, the opinions of teachers in public and private schools on outdoor science lectures do not differ significantly. Most teachers (83,8 %) describe outdoor science teaching as positive and the remaining 16,2 % give suggestions, views or own experiences that are not necessarily negative. For about one-third of the teachers at public school teachers (31,0 %) and one-fifth of the teachers at private schools (20,0 %). There are differences in the subcategories "curriculum", "school location", “students behavioural problems", "difficult-to-manage working methods", "limited workbook tasks" and "schedule", all of which are given by teachers in public schools, while their colleagues in private schools do not face these challenges. No statistically significant differences were found between teachers at public and private primary schools in the assessment of self-competence and the management of their own competence in outdoor science teaching. It can therefore be concluded that teachers feel equally competent. Significantly different results were reported with regard to the frequency of use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology), as teachers in public schools tend to use ICT in outdoor science lessons more often than teachers in private school. On average, teachers rate the equipment in their school as good. However, public school teachers assume that Slovenian private schools (where they do not teach) are better equipped, just as private school teachers consider public schools to be less well equipped (indicating that public schools are neither well not poorly equipped).
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