Transformative learning for future teachers: analyzing the impact of experiential workshops in Turin University (Italy)

The challenge of teaching to live in a sustainable way needs an innovative education, adequate in a globalized world: it is necessary to find another way to understand our role in the planet and the relations that we have with other living and non-living elements. For these purposes, the pre-school and primary school period is widely considered crucial to preparing for early forms of action and activism around environmental issues; furthermore, the initial education of teachers, its values and practice are the main drivers of change in schools and among the students. This large-scale study reports the results of a survey conducted during the academic years 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 between the participants to several laboratories proposed within a training course for student teachers at the University of Torino (Italy): the aim was to understand these outdoor learning experiences may have a transformative potential in the level of connection with nature perceived by the students, as well as in their willingness to apply the same teaching methodologies in their future profession. Results of the survey show that there has been a significant empowerment of the perceived connection to nature of the participants; in terms of transformative impact, more than half of the respondents declared that the laboratories led to a change in their beliefs or behaviors. We suggest thus to increase the number of these kind of educational experiences in order to promote a paradigm shift in teacher education toward sustainability.