“Hedgerow”: a cooperation between geography, didactics of geography and school practice to improve teacher training at university

Abstract

The project “hedgerow” is a cooperation between the head of the nature conservation project “Altmühlleiten”, the assistant professor of the department of didactics of geography of the Catholic University of Eichstätt, and pupils of a primary school. The aim of all partners was to improve the children’s knowledge about hedgerows as well as cooperation between scientific geography and teacher training. In the theoretical part, a selected model that the author uses to describe the term ‘cooperation’ will be presented, the elements of which must be fulfilled to form an effective cooperation . Then, this model is transformed to the hedgerow project. The project itself consisted of four steps. First, the participating students of geography didactics are informed about hedgerows in a very interactive way. Hedgerows are a refuge for native wild flora and fauna. They were typical cultural elements of this region but have largely disappeared. After acquiring this information, each university student group prepared one lesson for each school class level during a didactic lecture at university next. With regard to sustainable working and teaching, the students held their prepared lessons in different primary school classes. Finally, the pupils built their own hedgerow in nature. This project can be seen as an example for cooperation between geography, didactics of geography and school practice.