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Teaching Nature, to Learn from Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Alfredo Milanaccio
Alfredo Milanaccio*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali, Università di Torino, Via S. Ottavio, 20 10124 Turin Italy
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Abstract

This article describes some aspects of an Italian didactic-pedagogic experiment about interaction between “town” pupils and natural environments. The project's general philosophy is to try to make pupils aware of our condition as “biocultural beings,” as results of biological, technological, and cultural co-evolution. The presence of extensive natural, cultural, and technological resources at the site where the experiment takes place favors such an awareness.

Some examples of teaching techniques designed especially to introduce pupils to the difficult but necessary subject matter of co-evolution are also described. Such teaching techniques have as their main goal to make the pupils themselves able to construct a logical network of questions, rather than in teachers giving them already prepared answers.

The as yet unresolved problems, which concern the training of teachers steeped in traditional methods, are also briefly described.

Type
Specific Courses in Politics and the Life Sciences
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , August 1986 , pp. 83 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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