Volume 8, Number 1

Implementing A Landscape Educational Project Among Greek Pupils: Valuable Lessons and Hard Realizations

  Authors

Ioanna Siama, Theano S. Terkenli and Aikaterini Klonari, University of the Aegean, Greece

  Abstract

This paper presents and assesses the implementation of a landscape educational project for schoolchildren in Greece, where landscape awareness is inadequate. Specifically, the project was implemented in a sample of 239 kindergarten, first-grade and sixth-grade primary school children, in different regions of Greece. Children's emotional, behavioural and cognitive relationship with the landscape was first evaluated, through an in-depth questionnaire. Next, children participated in a series of interactive experiential activities, for the purposes of awareness-raising and familiarization with the landscape. Finally, the project's efficiency was evaluated through another questionnaire, building on the initial one. Following the project's implementation, children's landscape conceptualizations and behavioral interrelations with it appear broadened and nuanced with age. However, deeply-rooted cultural views about the landscape seem to persist in the children’s emotional rapport with their landscapes, notwithstanding the fact that such educational projects ought to be adjusted to the their specific spatio-temporal and cultural contexts.

  Keywords

landscape, landscape perception, landscape education, educational project, pupils' perception.