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| Yayasan IDEP Foundation Training > Learnscapes for Indonesia |
| A new look at a practical environmental education for Indonesia |
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| What is learnscaping? |
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| Learnscapes bring the natural world and its ecological processes into education and returns education to the natural world, by creating unique and stimulating learning environments on school grounds and campuses. It transforms sterile grounds into dynamic learning environments that inter-relate with curricula in educational gardens, demonstration farms, outdoor/indoor classrooms and multi-purpose facilities.
Each learnscape project - a wildlife sanctuary, composting systems or garden - enhances curriculum development in holistic and innovate ways. For example, Art is integrated with technical drawing, food production is integrated with nutrition and health, while sustainable agriculture is integrated with earth sciences.
Learnscape projects benefit all participants - students, educators, parents and local communities, who create with their hands and learn real-life skills. They work with soil and water, grow plants and tend animals. They achieve real solutions to environmental problems by applying design principles that focus on utilizing natural processes, renewable energies and available resources to design eco-friendly buildings and environments.
Learnscaping also improves the social environment - participants learn how to co-operate with others and resolve differences, bridge generation and authority gaps, overcome gaps in skills through sharing information, and revive important cultural knowledge lost to modernization. Working together, everyone gains in self-sufficiency and problem-solving skills - so the process is itself a learning experience.
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| In Sept 1999 IDEP held the first ‘Learnscapes for Indonesia Workshop’ |
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| The objective of this workshop was to introduce the ‘Learnscaping’ technique for Environmental Education to Indonesian educators and curriculum developers.
This workshop brought together forty professional Indonesian participants, including local curriculum developers from IKIP, UI, UNESCO project participants and school heads and developers, including the Head of the Education Department in Bali, Ngurah Oka.
It was coordinated with help from volunteer supporters and facilitated by Philip Booth of The Australian Learnscapes Consultancy, & IGP Suryadharma Drs MS, Senior Lecturer & Learnscape specialist IKIP University, Yogyakarta.
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| During the workshop |
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An informal network was established for future cooperative project planning. Participants learned about the bigger picture of Learnscapes. All workshop participants were involved in ‘hands-on’ design experiences to learnscape a local school ground (Suta Dharma School) and prepare a concept plan for a commercial site (Tangeb Farm). They began exploring the possibilities of concept and design of these two sites, and the applicability of learnscapes for curriculum development.
They also learned about education for sustainability and permaculture systems, and how to tailor permaculture concepts to learncsaping. Finally the participants took their designs back to the sites to prepare detailed concept plans.
Field trips were also arranged to the Pupuan project location and Permaculture demonstration sites, and the NISBA school project site in Payangan.
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| The Outcome of this workshop |
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At the completion of a two week workshop, the participants were ready to begin some basic experiments for introducing Learnscape techniques into local schools. These pilots are now field-testing projects and teaching methods. To learn more about these Learnscapes pilot projects, click here.
Participants agreed that the Learnscape based curriculum materials were appropriate for application in Indonesia. They encouraged the development of related curriculum materials for use in introducing the approach into Indonesian curriculum.
Under the guidance of the local Department of Education, Yayasan IDEP in conjunction with Yayasan MACK developed a strategic plan to develop a Learnscapes curriculum appropriate for application Indonesia-wide. To learn more about IDEP’s Learnscapes curriculum development project, click here.
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