THE EVALUATION OF OUTDOOR LEARNING ACTIVITIES IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Outdoor learning has become an important part of modern education. It is used as an interactive teaching and learning method, which comes as a completion to formal education situations. It is mainly based on the development of transversal and key competencies, as well as the development of life-skills, which are the basics of modern educations systems and processes. Even if it is becoming more and more known and used in preschools and primary school, there are many unsolved questions about this topic. One of these is the matter of evaluation. Being of great value in the practical field, it is hard to find the right ways to evaluate the activities, the participants and the results. The main instrument used was the focus group, and it was realized among a number of preschool teachers and primary school teachers from Arad. Most of the interviewed teachers, had already been in contact with outdoor learning and its belonging activities but had questions regarding the evaluation methods and instruments they should use. This is very important because if there isn't a proper evaluation, the method may not reach the wanted finalities. Also, we have presented some of the most often used evaluation methods and instruments of outdoor learning. (c) 2019 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK