TEACHERS’ OPINIONS ON SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPLEMENTATION OF OUTDOOR SCHOOL IN THE TEACHING PROCESS

During the last few decades outdoor school or teaching in nature, as a particular form of educational work, has obtained a significant role in preparation and implementation of teaching in lower grades of primary school. As school is nowadays expected to respond to numerous request of modern society, this form of work could be one of possible solutions for finding not only new, different, interesting contents that are attractive to students but also patterns of educational activity. With various activities and many methods, techniques and forms of work, outdoor school opens up a space for suitable pedagogical action and implementation of teaching contents established by curriculum and syllabus and adapted to the environmental conditions where outdoor teaching is being applied. Its pedagogical values were confirmed in theory and practice a long time ago, so this form of educational work is increasingly getting attention of researchers and is the key subject of this paper. The paper shows results of the research the aim of which was to examine teachers’ attitudes on primary values, significance and contribution of outdoor education to more successful organization of teaching process and teaching implementation in the first stage of primary school education. Considering the fact that the research is theoretical and empirical in character, the methods used include theoretical analysis method and descriptive scientific research method. The main research techniques involve survey and scaling, while the instruments used include survey questionnaire which was specially designed for the purpose of this research. The survey population consisted of primary school teachers on the territory of the district of Vranje and the district of Bor, so the sample consists of 73 teachers employed in the school year of 2018/2019. In order to look at influence, dependency and differences among the analysed data, the results obtained in the research were processed by using certain statistical procedures: frequency (f), percentages (%), arithmetic mean (M), standard deviation (SD), chi-square test (χ²) , t - test and one-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA). The analysis results show that teachers greatly value the contribution of outdoor school to better organization of teaching process because it achieves positive effects in teaching process, in implementing educational and training aims and tasks, especially within the teaching of the subjects of Science and Social Studies and Physical Education. Furthermore, it can be concluded that the respondents give a positive account of its influence on the development of students’ capacities, their educational achievements and social relationships. Based on the respondents’ opinions, outdoor education should be enriched by various aspects in order to reach the expected quality level.