Landscape, Environmental Sustainability, and Climate Instability—The EDUSCAPE Project: University Research for Innovation in School Education

Abstract

This article presents the main contents, methods, and results of the European project EDUSCAPE (Erasmus+) developed by a team of international researchers from four countries, just over a year and a half after its launch with a focus on SAAD/UNICAM contributions. Into the scientific-disciplinary frame of environmental education and climate adaptation, EDUSCAPE aims to integrate the polysemic, transversal, and multidisciplinary concept of landscape and its decline, as a promoter of new forms of knowledge in response to emerging dynamics, within the educational offer of school programs (6–15 years). This paper presents the general structure of the project, the methodology experimented (PBL educational approach), and the qualitative and quantitative intermediate results obtained so far (literature review, curriculum analysis, and needs analysis). To integrate landscape into school curricula and renew them, EDUSCAPE is preparing Didactic Units (DUs) as the final result of the project to provide theoretical foundations and practical solutions supporting teaching which will be tested in the schools of the partnership network. In general, this paper explores the possibility to disseminate the pedagogical and social role of the landscape through a new way of teaching based on a deeper exploration of the theme that can stimulate critical thinking in current and future generations regarding the global/local challenges of the 21st century.