Understanding a Child’s Environment: Key Concepts and Educational Approaches
Concept of Environment
We differentiate between:
The Environment
The environment is defined as the set of elements, spaces, conditions, situations, and relationships that are part of the context of children and affect their development. The environment is the context in which development and learning take place through the exchange established between the individual and their environment through discovery. Observation and experimentation are key elements in this process.
The environment includes physical objects and environments, organizations, and more immediate social relations. It also encompasses areas that, despite their media (e.g., TV) and physical distance and time, are closely related to the child’s interests and arouse their curiosity and desire to learn.
This encompasses the portion of events that affect and are part of the experience of a person, a group of people, or humanity as a whole.
The Medium
The medium is the set of natural, social, cultural, and psychological factors that surround the individual. These factors are in a dialectical relationship with the individual, influencing their behavior and giving meaning to their actions. The human being is not a stranger to the medium but a part of it. Therefore, “the medium is set to the extent that the child perceives, knows, feels affected by it, and operates within it.”
Focus of Interest
Importantly, the focus of interest may revolve around four major needs:
- Eating to conserve and develop.
- Defending life.
- Protecting against and working against danger.
- Acting in solidarity.
From a very young age, children relate these centers of interest with other interests: animals, plants, nature, societies, civilizations, and cultures.
Phases of Interest
Each point of interest is divided into three phases:
1st Observation
This involves discovering the sensory qualities of objects: feeling, weighing, smelling, etc. It’s the beginning of the scientific method.
2nd Association
This consists of relating the background knowledge of our students with that acquired through observation, strengthening management, comparison, seriation, classification, abstraction, and generalization.
3rd Expression
This is the culmination of the process, and we can highlight two aspects:
- Specific Expression: This is the realization of their observations and personal creations, resulting in free drawing, crafts, etc.
- Abstract Expression: This is the embodiment of thinking through symbols and conventional codes, such as free text, mathematical language, musical expression, etc.
Justification for Studying the Environment
Methodological Justification
Fieldwork and direct observation are prioritized, enabling a range of knowledge to further the study of the distant.
Pedagogical Justification
Students should be educated to live in the society where they reside, knowing its past and the relationships among its members, allowing them to act critically over time.
Formational Justification
Students should learn not only concepts but also the means of assessing their environment to come to love and respect it.
Psychological Justification
The school is open to the environment, providing resources and learning situations for students to construct their own vision of people and things.
Teaching Principles for Environmental Knowledge
We can talk about three basic fields of experience:
- Knowing
- Being affected by it
- Doing or acting on it consciously and creatively
These fields of experience may be experienced by students through three cognitive processes:
- From direct sensory experience to accessing abstract concepts.
- From personal discovery to knowledge gained through testimony, information, or education from others.
- From a holistic grasp of the environment to understanding its various analytical elements.
Developing Teaching in Our Area
Teaching must arise from a dual perspective or a double path:
- From the subjective to the objective: Based on the subjective, lived experience to reach the objective or socially shared understanding.
- From the analytical to globalization: Based on the most global and undifferentiated access to the multiple components that make up the environment, not to dissolve the unity of the “medium” in its multiple elements, but to understand and explain it better, more segmented and methodical, but without losing sight of its integrative perspective.
Educational Value
The educational value of studying the environment promotes:
- The achievement of significant learning (not just mechanical activities).
- The use of procedures and techniques characteristic of the social sciences by facilitating students’ familiarity with the methods of scientific inquiry:
- Hypothesis formulation
- Utilization of varied techniques and procedures
- Observation, measurement, and data collection
- Communication and contrast of ideas
- Drawing conclusions, etc.
- The training of students with open minds and a critical spirit.
- The promotion of attitudes and values, with the emergence of personal commitments regarding their action in the environment they live in.
Purpose of Environmental Knowledge
- Promote the development and autonomous action in the environment (observation, reflective and critical opinion) through identification with social groups.
- Students should be able to move and orient themselves in space and time and get to know how social groups are organized, their patterns of behavior, etc.
- It pursues the acquisition and autonomous practice of habits, skills, and attitudes related to health and quality of life, the proper use of resources, and conservation and environmental improvements.
- Provide a rich environment conducive to personal relations: participation, accountability, respect, tolerance, and democratic coexistence.
- To acquire concepts, procedures, and attitudes which facilitate the interpretation of the environment around students.
Conclusion
The area of Environmental Awareness in the primary stage aims to help students discover and understand what shapes their reality, especially within the scope of their perception and experience. This environment includes both physical objects and environments, organizations, and immediate social relationships, as well as other areas that, despite their possible physical and temporal distance, become closely linked to their interests and provoke their curiosity and desire to learn as they grow. Therefore, considering the environment as the core axis of education and globalization has implications for the conceptual framework, focus, and organization of educational activities, as well as the impact of school life on the community and vice versa, allowing for easier integration of personal and social experiences, knowledge, and affective and cognitive activity of students.