Læringsutbytte

Knowledge

The student shall acquire knowledge about:

• Place and the spatial turn in social science and education
• Interactions between nature and culture
• Place-based learning

Skills

Students:

• can use basic social scientific terminology, modes of explanation and theories in their professional work
• can reflect on the understanding and uses of nature in society both past and present and show possible inroads to deal with related future issues
• can use and evaluate different tools that can be employed to teach students to take a social scientific perspective on nature

General competences

Students:

• can keep themselves up to date on the subject matter and reflect one’s own common practice
• can critically reflect on related social scientific questions

Innhold

In this course, we will look at the role of nature and the role of specific places in society. Examples like the mountains of Telemark or Oslo’s new opera building demonstrate how nature and place play an important role both in everyday life and in large scale politics. How does the search for ‘real’ nature show itself in different societies?

Questions such as these are important in different ways in different nations and their education systems. As the so-called spatial turn in social science shows, it is important to understand to role of local places if one wants to get to grips with the connection between nature and culture. Because of that we will get involved with the local environment and make excursions into the mountains but also visit places like the de-industrialized town Rjukan and make inquiries into the youth life of Notodden.

There, we will study how landscapes and cultural practices interact and how these concrete interactions can become resources in teaching and understanding the role of place in a wide range of settings: from resource-rich Norway to depopulated areas in Eastern Europe – the integration of nature in education is relevant in all of these places. Accordingly, we will focus on how to use the specific qualities of local surroundings in teaching. Instead of seeing nature and (mobile) technologies as opposed, we will see how the global internet and local places can be connected and together serve as rich resource in educating ourselves to confront today’s challenges.

Arbeids- og læringsformer

The course will be split into three parts:

• Place & the spatial turn in social science and education
• Nature and culture
• Qualitative field work project and/or in-school practice.

We will use a variety of activities to achieve the study goals of this course, among them excursions and discussions with experts, use of different kinds of source material (from text to geographical informations systems) and in-class discussions.

Designated parts of the program are mandatory, as will be stated in the syllabus.

Vurderingsformer

The assessment of the course is tied to its three distictive parts (see above). Each part will be accompanied by student essays (no grades, just pass / non-pass) and an exam (1/3 of the final grade for each):

• written exam
• oral exam
• research / practice report

These three exams will result in a single grade. The grade scale is from A-F.

Det tas forbehold om mindre justeringer i planen.