Keaping it real: Aesthetical exploration of the Straumøy model

Abstract

This project takes place on Straumøy Farm, a joint educational-agricultural arena fostering experiential learning through practical work on the farm. The school-farm cooperation stems from the Farm as an Educational Resource Program who’s aim is to create sustainable educational learning environment for students and farmers (Jolly & Krogh, 2012). Today Straumøy farm provides an education program for special-needs students based on the theoretical guidelines of the school-farm coop (Jolly & Krogh, 2012). This project seeks to investigate if Straumøy´s Experiential Education model also might foster aesthetical learning (Austring & Sørensen, 2006, p.77)? If so, how does aesthetical learning manifest itself during the project? 14 students from first and second grade are engrossed in an impulse directed teaching scenario on the farm over the course of a year. All data is coded and analyzed based on Austring and Sørensen’s Aesthetical Learning Theory, Malcolm Ross aesthetical impulse models and the collective theoretical guidelines for the School-Farm cooperation program (Austring & Sørensen, 2006 p. 155) (Jolly & Krogh, 2012). Through the development of our project we also include Gert Biesta to help explain the evident formative processes that clearly transpire within the student/teacher group during the visits (Biesta, G. 2013, p. 133).

The results show that aesthetical learning does transpire in the Straumøy learning model through Hansjörg Hohr´s social learning model and the aesthetical impulse as defined by Malcolm Ross´s Impulse model (Austring & Sørensen, 2006, p. 83) (ibid. p 155). The farm allows for both collective and individual indirect impulses during the day. The indirect impulse allows the students to experience something unique and transcribe and communicate their experience collectively wither their peers and teachers. The realness of the experience allows this communication of emotional a sensual experience to provide relevance and meaning to the student as they learn in a context that is real. It the aesthetical learning method that connects the experiential learning (empirical learning) to the discursive learning method thus allowing our aesthetical mediation of the world to collect our otherwise fragmented emotional and sensual understand of the world into a collective whole.