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Learning Science Outside the Classroom ReviewIn the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am a professional outdoor science educator, and will be reviewing the book from that perspective. Someone without a professional background in the field will have to comment on it from a more general perspective.
I found this book while searching for something to use in an internship program at the Outdoor Science School where I work. After reading it, I will not be using this book. Though it is not totally without value, it's value is severely limited, and certainly does not justify the high price. It looks like this was written as a textbook, possibly even for a class one of the authors was teaching. Like most textbooks, the publishers can charge ridiculous prices because they have a captive customer base. In my opinion, if you are taking an education class for which the professor lists this book as the required textbook, then you should SERIOUSLY question the knowledge and experience of your professor.
Problems:
- It's very light on actual content. The real content that is there could easily fit into 50 or 60 pages. The rest of the 238 pages are just filler. To use an audio analogy, it has a really bad signal to noise ratio.
- It's written from a very UK perspective. While not a problem, per se, it does lead to a lot of silliness like undefined acronyms and offhand references to UK education laws. This is extremely frustrating to non-UK readers. I'm not sure if it's the result of bad writing, bad editing, or just extreme provincialism by the authors, but it seriously detracts from the value of the book.
- Concepts are presented (many of which border on self-evident), but then are never adequately developed. For example, there is a chapter on "Using Freshwater Habitats". But rather than talk about how to conduct a field investigation in a freshwater habitat, the author spends most of the chapter talking about how to build and maintain a school pond. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but here in the US most elementary school teachers are not scientists. Most have no clue how to conduct a field investigation, let alone with students. After reading this book, they will know they CAN use freshwater habitats to teach science, but they will be just as clueless about HOW to actually do that.
In summary, if you are in a teacher training program in the UK, and if it has never occurred to you that a zoo might be a good place to teach about animals, or a botanical garden can be used to teach about plants, then this book may have value for you. Otherwise, don't waste your money.
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