Teaching the relationship between man and nature in Environmental Literacy with the help of Transformative learning through Art in Adult Education

Abstract

This conceptual paper focuses on the relationship between man and nature, allowing the students to develop critical thinking and transformative learning through art. Art develops imagination and aesthetic experience offers the possibility to process many symbols and makes the expression of multiple meanings possible. The paper shows how the authors encouraged their trainees at the Second Chance School, Greece, to consider ways in which nature and the environment benefit humans in everyday life. Then the students were divided into groups of four and prompted to write down their thoughts, which were immediately shared in class generating a discussion, which revolved around two critical questions: a) Can contact with nature make you a better person? b) Does the love of nature imply love for life? Subsequently, some teaching media were used to help the trainees process and correlate the questions to be raised. The trainees described the feelings experienced by interacting with each project separately and discussed the role of nature in improving the aesthetics and the psyche of a person. According to them, they experienced the intensity, balance and harmony that were emitted by the texts and the painting and enjoyed the descriptive images and the beauty of the landscape. This was followed by the reflection on the deeper meaning of each supervisory instrument separately and the role of the environment in shaping individual emotions. The experience of this course has led the authors to believe that nature can nourish students; vision and creativity; however, empirical research is required to further explore this important subject.