In this article I share student and teacher experiences of forest walks (in Finnish: Metsäkävely) as a form of outdoor education in a Finnish special education school in a hospital setting. I was the teacher of these students in the hospital school setting, and so was an insider researcher, and teacher as researcher, undertaking…

In this article, I have sought to develop an understanding of the contribution of imaginative and nature appreciation in early childhood environmental education dealing with old, cultural nature myths and beliefs. The argument rests on the belief that the basis of a child-environmental education is in imagination which resonates with play,…

In this study, we investigate how digital storying creates opportunities for children to attend to their emotional experiences in and about nature. Following relational ontology and socio-cultural theorising, we focus our analysis on the temporal-spatial entanglements of children's emotional experiences. Our inquiry draws on a case study of two…

Purpose: This paper explores the concept of peer-to-peer learning (P2PL) in the context of North-European small-scale forest owners. The aim is to develop a framework for initiating new and evaluating already existing forest owners' P2PL communities. Design: Previous studies of peer-learning are used to determine and justify eight dimensions for…

Virtual Forest is a web-based, open-access learning environment about forests designed for primary-school pupils between the ages of 10 and 13 years. It is pedagogically designed to develop an understanding of ecology, to enhance conceptual development and to give a holistic view of forest ecosystems. Various learning tools, such as concept maps,…

Addressing the sustainability challenges in the forest sector in Mozambique requires capacity building for higher education and training of new skilled expert and future decision-makers. Our approach was to develop a study module on and pedagogical approaches to industrial environmental engineering and sustainability. The idea was to develop a…

This paper discusses the OpenForest portal and its related multidisciplinary learning project. The OpenForest portal is an open learning environment and ecosystem, in which students can participate in co-developing and co-creating practices. The aim of the OpenForest ecosystem is to create an extensive interactive network of diverse learning…

The aim of this socioculturally informed study is to explore teachers' insights into connected-learning activities and networks. An instructional approach based on design-oriented pedagogy (DOP) was employed for a teachers' in-service project in Finland. An open-ended design task for the participating teachers and educators from kindergartens (N =…

Connected learning is claimed to support children to connect their formal learning with wider social network and media tools in an interest-driven and inquiry-oriented manner. In a formal context there are few successful implementations of connected learning. This study explores how a kindergarten community of 8 adults and 42 children, equipped…

Children explore their environment through experiences and each experience is meaningful in developing their environmental consciousness and identity. On the basis of the drawn landscape experiences, the present qualitative study set out to find out what landscapes the participating students deemed worth conserving. The data consisted of the…

The purpose of this study was to explore six-year-old Finnish preschoolers' collaboration during a designing session, where they received a task to collaboratively design and sketch forest animals' nests. Peer interaction is a natural part of craft, design and technology education because the learning situation itself provides various…

Learning outcomes, as a conceptual base, are a recognised phenomenon in higher education. Advances in technology, such as web-based technologies in teaching, have facilitated learning efficiency, while such technologies relation to learning outcomes remains a popular topic of research. In this article, we have employed the feedback of 312 Finnish…

The purpose of this research was to study the content of the work of two special education professions in Sweden, special teachers and special pedagogues. In addition, we compare their work to the work of Finnish special teachers. The Swedish participants were 74 special educators: 27 special teachers and 47 special pedagogues. The Finnish data…

While nature environments afford food for human consumption, there is a dearth of empirical inquiry that considers foraging as a sustainable, seasonal practice that builds human-nature relations. This gap in the literature is particularly apparent in early childhood education literature. Drawing on observations recorded at two forest-based nature…

Climate change and the projected depletion of fossil energy resources pose multiple global challenges. Innovative technologies offer interesting possibilities to achieve more sustainable outcomes in the energy production sector. Local, decentralized alternatives have the potential to sustain livelihoods in rural areas. One example of such a…