The emotional perception of landscape between research and education

Abstract

The paper presents the laboratory activity put at the heart of the action training based on the idea of Geography as a science, whose holistic dimension fosters individual knowledge of the outside world and, at the same time, facilitates the understanding of human interaction with it. The didactic activities were performed basing them on an e-Learning methodology via the Moodle platform, a technology adopted in the e-Learning Lab of the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Salerno. The laboratory involved 234 students – enrolled in the third year of the Primary Educational Sciences Degree – randomly divided into 26 groups. The investigation conducted through the laboratory availed of images that, far from being a mere instrument, involved higher cognitive processes, essential for the completion of a significant training process. The methodology adopted and the creation of a virtual learning environment are completely in line with the constructivist pedagogy that considers cooperation, collaboration, sharing and negotiation of purposes and meanings as key drivers for a really effective teaching. Through the lab experience, the learners were allowed to investigate a lived-acted space by identifying landscape elements symbolizing certain emotions. Making use of a photo-elicitation technique, the research helped them to gain a greater awareness of the landscape as a result of the interactions between man and nature, and turned out to be an effective tool for knowledge construction and training.