Children’s connection to nature as fostered through residential environmental education programs: Key variables explored through surveys and field journals

Abstract

Children’s connection to nature increasingly is of interest in education, psychology, urban planning, and other related fields. Research findings emphasize the central importance of early connections due to resulting benefits for environmental awareness, knowledge, social-emotional learning, health, and wellbeing. To more clearly conceptualize the process by which connection to nature occurs, we studied fifth-grade students (n = 317) from three California schools (12 classrooms) participating in a four-day residential field-study program in different times of the year. The most revealing finding was the influence of weather on developing connection to nature. On average, students participating during inclement weather had significantly lower connection to nature scores on the post-experience than on the pre-experience measures. This insight into the influence of weather led to suggestions about program design, planning, and management of expectations. Although mild weather did not cause an issue for participants, severe weather interfered with developing and maintaining strongly connected nature-related relationships, suggesting that field studies be undertaken with caution during extreme weather.

Keywords:

• Children
• connection to nature
• residential field study
• environmental education program
• weather

Acknowledgements

We deeply appreciate support from the Walker Creek Ranch’s staff, naturalists, and administrators as well as the students, parents, teachers, and administrators at the participating schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laleh M. Talebpour

Laleh M. Talebpour has conducted evaluation projects for nature centers and museums. Her research focuses on children’s relationships with nature as well as learning in informal settings and program evaluation. She emphasizes evaluation to understand how immersive-field-study programs work to achieve positive results in the human-nature relationship.

Patricia L. Busk

Patricia L. Busk is a professor in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco, and was a visiting professor in the School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley from 1978 to 1991. Her research focuses on Quantitative Methods in Educational Psychology, meta-analysis, nonparametric methods, randomization tests, test construction, and performance assessment.

Joe E. Heimlich

Joe E. Heimlich is Senior Director of Research at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) in Columbus, and Academy Professor Emeritus with Ohio State University. His research focuses on learning in informal environmental settings and program evaluation.

Nicole M. Ardoin

Nicole M. Ardoin is an associate professor at Stanford University where she is the Emmett Family Faculty Scholar and Sykes Family Director of the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER) in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences. She has a joint appointment in the Graduate School of Education and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. She researches social-ecological systems, with an emphasis on the complex relationships among environmental learning, environmental behavior, and place.