Local Community Based Outdoor Activities through Integrating Subjects in Social Studies for Sustainability

Abstract: This study is designed to know contribution of local community based outdoor activities for education for sustainability. 7 teachers from Sweden and 7 teachers from Korea got involved in this study and they chose and conducted one activity from the 17 activities that I offered. After they had done the activity with their upper 13 years old students, they completed questionnaire about the conditions of class, the reason of their choice, advantages/disadvantages of the activities and the actual obstacle they had in schools to have outdoor class through open-ended questions. They also were asked to answer level of integrating subjects in social studies by Likert scale, offered opinions about relevancy to sustainability with principles and analyzed the activity with 4 ways of knowing. These three questions are asked to know the contribution of the activities for education for sustainability. This research offers comparison of teachers‘ opinion and educational condition from two countires when having the activities and how the activities are conducive to education for sustainability. In addition, it provides 17 activities which can be useful to social studies teachers who are interested in local community based outdoor activity.