MA in Outdoor and Sustainability Education

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Discover the educational potential of leaving the classroom and exploring the surroundings. All children deserve the opportunity to learn and reach their full potential. This master’s program will increase your knowledge about learning processes, focusing on experience-based learning, using different modes and methods. The advanced courses in educational science will help teachers and other educators understand how a variety of outdoor environments can be used as resources for learning and knowledge.

All children deserve the opportunity to learn and reach their full potential. This master’s program will increase your knowledge about learning processes with a focus on experience-based learning, using different modes and methods. The advanced courses in educational science will help teachers and other educators understand how a variety of outdoor environments can be used as resources for learning and knowledge.

Outdoor education is a diverse field of research and practice. This program derives from the Scandinavian perspective on outdoor education - the concept of "uteskola", literally meaning outdoor school. In outdoor school, the syllabus is taught outdoors on a regular basis in an interplay with indoor learning. You will broaden your professional expertise as a teacher by training to use outdoor environments for teaching and learning.

Outdoor learning for all ages

You will gain theoretical and practical knowledge on how to teach different school subjects outdoors, in natural as well as urban environments. We explore the city, nature reserves, and other green settings, playgrounds, and school grounds as learning environments. Examples of educational settings come from the entire school system, pre-school up to adult learning. You will also have the possibility to focus on your particular interests and field of practice.

In addition to classroom lectures and seminars, students work in pairs or groups with weekly assignments in outdoor natural and cultural landscapes. All program courses include individually written assignments and you will collect your own empirical data for your thesis, using qualitative or quantitative, or mixed research methods.

Provide young people with sustainability skills

One essential question in societies worldwide is how to sustain our planet’s functions and resources and at the same time improve the well-being for a growing population. Environmental and sustainability education focuses on possible ways to work with the knowledge, skills, and values needed for contributing and participating in a sustainable society. Furthermore, the program explores what research has revealed about the role of nature and green settings for learning, health, and well-being.

As a graduate, you will be able to work with pedagogical development in schools or other educational fields in society. The program also prepares you for future Ph.D. studies and research.

Syllabus

Introduction

The program trains students to use environments outside the traditional classroom for teaching and learning. The program strives to have a good balance between theoretical depth and practical professional skills. A point of departure for teaching and learning is the natural and cultural landscape. Those experiences are aligned with contemporary research through lectures and seminars. Outdoor education is related to environmental and sustainability education and disciplinary teaching in different subjects.

Purpose

The aim is that students shall develop a scientific foundation for qualified professional work with a focus on outdoor education and environmental and sustainability education. The program aims to develop professional competence and knowledge in the above areas. The program shall enable the foundation for the development of scientific and practical competence. The program will also prepare the students for future doctoral studies and research.

Aim

The student shall show

Knowledge and understanding

• knowledge and understanding in the fields of outdoor education and environmental and sustainability education
• deepened insight into contemporary research and professional work in the fields of outdoor education and environmental and sustainability education
• deepened methodological knowledge in educational sciences

Skills and abilities

• ability to critically and systematically integrate knowledge in both theory and practice, and analyze, evaluate and handle complex questions and situations
• skills to use the natural and cultural landscape as a resource in one own profession
• ability to critically, independently, and creatively identify and formulate research questions, plan and with adequate methods conduct qualified tasks within given time frames and thereby contribute to the development of knowledge and to evaluate this work
• ability to orally and in a written form clearly account for and discuss conclusions and the knowledge and arguments that are behinds them in dialogue with different groups
• skills that are required for participating in research and development work or independently participating in pedagogical activities and relate to international research

Ability to evaluate and approach

• ability to within the discipline make judgments in accordance with relevant scientific, societal, and ethical aspects and show awareness of ethical aspects on research and development work
• insight of potentials and barriers of science, it’s role in society and human responsibility for how science is used
• ability to identify the requirement of additional knowledge and to take responsibility for further development of knowledge

The above goals are concretized in the course syllabuses.

_Are you curious about what it is like to study at LiU? Join us for a chat about what it is like to live and study on our campuses in Sweden. We offer free webinars and recordings for both prospective and admitted degree students throughout the year. Visit our _ _Meet us online _ _page. _

About Linköping University

Linköping University will never rest on its laurels.

In close collaboration with the business world and society, Linköping University (LiU) conducts world-leading, boundary-crossing research in fields including materials science, IT and hearing. In the same spirit, the university offers many innovative educational programs, many of them with a clear vocational focus, leading to qualification as, for example, doctors, teachers, economists, and engineers.

The university has 32,000 students and 4,000 employees on four campuses. Together we seek answers to the complex questions facing us today. Our students are among the most desirable in the labor market and international rankings consistently place LiU as a leading global university.

LiU achieved university status in 1975 and innovation is our only tradition.

History of Linköping University

In 1975 Sweden’s sixth university was founded in Linköping. Since then Linköping University (LiU) has grown considerably, expanding to Norrköping and Stockholm.

Linköping has been an important center of learning since medieval times when Linköping Cathedral offered a school with extensive international contacts and its own student hall in Paris. In 1627 the Cathedral School became the third upper secondary school in Sweden and in 1843 a college for elementary school teachers began operations. In Norrköping, the Fröbel Institute – Sweden’s first college for training pre-school teachers – was founded in 1902.

From university college to university

What would later become Linköping University began to take shape in the mid-1960s. Higher education in Sweden was expanding and in 1965 the Swedish Parliament decided to establish a branch of Stockholm University, together with a university college of engineering and medicine, in Linköping.

In the autumn of 1967, the branch of Stockholm University moved into premises in central Linköping. There the first students could take courses in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Two years later the units for engineering and medicine got underway.

In 1970 education and research started moving into the recently built Campus Valla, a short distance from the town center. Buildings A and B were the first to be completed. The same year the various parts were merged to form Linköping University College, including faculties of engineering, medicine and arts, and sciences.

The new university college was the first in Sweden to offer study programs in Industrial Engineering and Management and Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering, both starting in 1969. A few years later, in 1975, Linköping University launched Sweden’s first Computer Science and Engineering program.

1975 was also the year when Linköping University College became Linköping University, the sixth university in Sweden. In line with the 1977 reform of the Swedish higher education system, teacher education was also transferred to Linköping University.

Interdisciplinary research and problem-based learning

Linköping University has always worked with innovation in education and research. In 1980 the newly formed Department of Thematic Studies adopted an approach that was new in Sweden. Research was organized in interdisciplinary themes, such as Technology and Social Change or Water and Environmental Studies. Scientists worked across boundaries to solve complex problems. LiU was also first in Sweden to introduce graduate research schools for different themes. The model later spread to other parts of the university and became a national success.

The new Faculty of Health Sciences (Hälsouniversitetet), formed in 1986, combined governmentally and regionally funded education. It introduced a radically changed methodology, being the first in Sweden to use problem-based learning, PBL. Later, LiU became the first university in the world to allow students from different health sciences programs to treat actual patients on a student-managed training ward.

Expansion to Norrköping – and Stockholm

A significant milestone in the history of the University was the opening of Campus Norrköping in 1997. Some programs had previously operated from Norrköping, but the number of students now grew drastically in line with government efforts to expand higher education. Historical factories in the former industrial district were again filled with life, as they were filled with classrooms, laboratories, cafés, a library and of course students.

Linköping University also expanded to Stockholm when the reputable Carl Malmsten School of Furniture sought a collaborative partner from the academic sector. The Malmsten furniture design and handicraft programs became part of LiU in 2000. After almost 60 years at Södermalm in central Stockholm, Malmstens moved to new premises on the island of Lidingö in the autumn of 2009. LiU got its fourth campus.

Buro Millennial / Pexels

LiU in figures

Some important figures for Linköping University.

Education

• 32,000 students (full-time equivalents 17,907)
• 21,400 on Campus Valla
• 5,500 on Campus Norrköping
• 3,900 on University Hospital Campus (US)
• 2,100 distance students and students in other locations, including Campus Lidingö

(Some students take courses on more than one campus.)

• 120 study programs, of which 27 are international programs in English
• 550 single-subject courses
• Exchange agreements with 400 universities in 50 countries
• 2,400 international students
• 2,200 first cycle degrees
• 2,700 second-cycle degrees

Research and scientific training

• 300 professors
• 1,200 PhD students
• 40 licentiate degrees
• 140 doctoral degrees

Staff

• 4,000 employees (full-time equivalents 3,156)