Walking the Soundscape: Creative Learning Pathways to Environmental Education in Chilean Schools

This article explores the pedagogical potential of soundscapes as creative learning tools for advancing environmental education in Chilean primary schools. Drawing on the Soundlapse project, we designed and implemented a school workshop that combined activity sheets, an online bird-sound repository, structured soundwalks, and immersive audio concerts with teachers and students in Valdivia. The study employed a qualitative, participatory design, analyzing teacher interviews through reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes emerged: (1) listening as pedagogical practice, (2) learning through place and the senses, (3) creativity and cross-disciplinarity, and (4) implementation challenges and opportunities. Teachers emphasized the transformative role of attentive listening, which reconfigured classroom dynamics through shared silence and cultivated students’ capacity for self-regulation. Soundwalks and sensory encounters with local wetlands positioned the environment as a ‘living laboratory,’ fostering ecological awareness, attachment to place, and intergenerational knowledge. Creative activities such as sound mapping legitimized symbolic and artistic modes of representation, while interdisciplinary collaborations between science and music expanded curricular possibilities. At the same time, institutional rigidity and lack of resources highlighted the importance of teacher agency, co-designed materials, and flexible frameworks to sustain these practices. We argue that soundscape-based education offers a timely opportunity to integrate sensory, creative, and ecological dimensions into school curricula, aligning with national and international calls for interdisciplinary sustainability education. By treating listening and creativity as core rather than peripheral, such approaches may open new pathways for cultivating ecological awareness, cultural belonging, and pedagogical innovation.