Two things coincide tomorrow (Tues 1st April) that I am involved in: Whan That Aprille Day, Maistre Chaucer-off-Twitter’s way of celebrating ancient languages, and the Oxford Brookes Learning and Teaching Conference. I am tweeting about one, and giving a paper (more of a napkin or even a serviette, really) on whether students need to go outside to learning about outdoor learning. This is my punt:
While many people writing about the nature of young children’s learning underline the importance of first-hand experience (e.g. Fisher 2013; Canning 2013), little attention has yet been paid to whether teaching adults about young children outdoors is best done through practical experience. This session would aim to look at:
- what elements of outdoors learning for young children can most effectively be translated into adult experience and why.
- whether practical experience of being outside adds substantially to the students’ understanding of young children’s learning.
- whether experience of being outdoors should be an integral part of the “learning journey” of a programme that does not have a required professional output such as QTS.
Canning N (2013) “‘Where’s the bear? Over there!’ – creative thinking and imagination in den making” Early Child Development and Care, Volume 183, Number 8, 1 August 2013 , pp. 1042-1053(12)
Fisher J (2013, 4th ed) Starting from the Child. Maidenhead: Open University Press
And I thought, foolishly, that translating some of my powerpoint into Latin would be a good thing to do. Maybe just the title of the module I’m talking about.
Translating Outdoor Learning in the Early Years seems a good enough project until you realise that outdoor learning is not an easily translated, and neither is Early Years. Neither concept is really around in classical Rome, although of course both education and the joys of the locus amoenus are well documented.
What kind of learning are we talking about? Eruditio? No, that’s not it. Doctrina? Educatio? Ah, but is learning the same as education? Even if we can translate “learning” as “education,” will that fit? Disciplina? Well, that begs the question as to whether outdoor learning is a set of skills and cultural practices: maybe it is. Perhaps the verb-noun infinitive of a word like cognosco? Hmmm. Well then, disco? How’s about a gerund, signifying “something that is to be taught”? A plural form?
Tomorrow the title of Module U70124 (Cursus U70124) will be Discenda (those things which should be learned) Puerilia (in childhood) Extranea (to do with being outside). I am uncomfortably aware that cognates of another possibility, eruditio puerilis extranea, come very close to extraneous and puerile erudtion.
Absit omen.
nicktomjoe 