EOE-Conference 2022
19th international Conference of the European Institute for Outdoor Adventure Education and Experiential Learning (EOE)
Conference-Theme: Childhood and Nature
19th - 23th October 2022 in Germany
Conference Theme
The conference will be held under the topic "Childhood and Nature". Since one main focus is intended to be on considering the educational institutions of kindergarden, school and youth welfare in their function as companions to the developmental processes of children, we will look at the childhood phase between the ages of three and eleven. Seen from a developmental psychology perspective, this is the phase of separation and individuation following the early symbiotic connection with the mother up to the threshold to adolescence. Moreover, it is the time of children's increasing desire to become more and more self-determined in their actions, even if these are as yet small in scope. The family still provides enough security to support this desire. At the point of starting school this striving for autonomy receives its epistemic endowment. The desire of the child to act independently is stabilised and, at the same time, fostered by an energetic habitus formation, which, in the ideal case, is characterised by curiosity and thirst for knowledge, willingness to take risks, exploration drive, great powers of imagination, openness to the world, optimism and self-confidence.
Where children also have access to (more or less) open nature, their urge for autonomy can find attractive playful practice opportunities in natural places and atmospheres and with natural things. Watercourses, ponds, puddles, hedgerows, thickets, glades, trees, wild flowers, fallows, wind and storm, rain and snow, half-light and moonlight, fog and mist, the phenological year are brimful with opportunities for both boys and girls designed to foster the children's habitus of openness. Here they can search and find, observe, construct and build, climb, collect and put into order, discover and explore, prove themselves, fail, whittle, recognise and describe. They need all their senses to perceive everything they encounter in their specific details. And at the end their hearts are full to bursting with their experiences and feelings, which they have to tell and tell and tell.
This marks out the framework within which the oral presentations, workshops, lectures, poster presentations, forums and debates are supposed to be held. In order to fill these outlined features of the event we are looking for contributions to the following topic areas:
- about the experience potentials of natural places, things and atmospheres
- about practice forms in natural places, with things and in specific atmospheres
- about the transitions between family to kindergarden & kindergarden to school
- about nature-related family welfare work
- about practice forms in natural places with educational institutions like kindergarden, school and youth work
- about "low-threshold" therapeutical practise forms for children in natural places
Registration
For registration please click here
Submit Abstract
Submit your abstracts for oral presentations, workshops or poster presentations here
Conference Programme
Keynote Speakers
Keynote speakers will be announced soon
Venue/travel information
The 19th EOE- Conference will be held from 19th until 23th of October 2022 at “Bildungsstätte” (Outdoor centre) Wolfshausen, 35096 Weimar (Lahn). The Venue is located close to the town of Marburg. Nearest airport is Frankfurt Main Airport – about 90 KMs south from Wolfshausen. There are various train connections to Marburg (Lahn) leaving Frankfurt Main Train station at least every hour. In case you need support for your travel plannings please feel free to contact us via e-Mail to eoe2022(at)bsj-marburg(dot)de.
About bsj Marburg
bsj e.V. Marburg (founded in 1986) is a non-profit youth organisation that works with the physical aspects and potentials of life styles. Body, movement, physical expression and aesthetic approaches are the core of our social work programs. Outdoor Adventure Education and experiential learning activities are central aspects of our working agenda. The main target groups in our leisure, school and vocational training programs are social disadvantaged adolescents and children.
The bsj is working in social deprived areas, with institution of residential care, schools, projects of social work with youth at risk, in integration projects of handicapped and not handicapped young people. Today bsj Marburg with its round about 80 employees is represented in various working areas and is an officially approved out-of-school youth education institution in the County of Hesse.
Moreover, bsj is organizing regional and cross regional conferences, offers a wide range of further education for professionals. Since 1996 bsj is member of the European Institute for Outdoor Adventure Education and Experiential Learning (EOE-Network). The bsj also edited a lot of publications (in German and English language) about the different aspects of a social work with the media of body and movement.
As a youth support organisation bsj has been responsible for several communal, regional and cross regional pilot projects, funded by different Federal Ministries and ministries of the Federal State of Hesse and the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Since 1993 bsj runs the outdoor centre ZERUM in Ueckermünde which is specialised in using outdoor adventure education for the integration of handicapped girls and boys. In Hesse, we run three other outdoor centres, which are specialised in offering projects to institutions of early education, schools and others to innovate daily school procedures as well as learning approaches and to support the non-formal and informal learning and educational process of all participants of our programs.
About EOE
The European Institute for Outdoor Adventure Education and Experiential Learning (EOE) was founded 1996 in Spital (Austria) by people from the academic, social and youth work fields who were all interested in bringing together practitioners, teachers and researchers from different European countries. For further information visit www.eoe-network.eu