‘My wood isn’t one of those dark and scary ones’: children’s experience and knowledge of woodland in the English rural landscape

ABSTRACT

Recent studies of children have argued that children are suffering from a deficiency in nature experience. Some argue that a lack of experience leads to poor affective relations which for wooded environments may be manifested as fear. This study investigates a geographical knowledge gap in understanding children’s relationships with woodland. This interactive qualitative study included 21 junior age children living in a rural setting in Derbyshire, England, UK. Most were found to visit local woodlands regularly, though unsupervised visits were usually limited to woods adjacent to housing. The children demonstrated good levels of practical knowledge though explicit knowledge, such as tree names, was generally poor. The majority of children had positive attitudes towards woodland, especially those with the greatest experience. Adventure, calm and freedom were identified as major themes. Fear was widespread but rarely dominated and was often associated with exhilaration linked to cultural imaginaries such as computer games and films.

KEYWORDS:

• Woodland
• children
• environmental education
• landscape geography
• outdoor education
• trees

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All names used in this study have been changed. The Rural Urban Classification defines areas as rural if they are outside of settlements with more than 10,000 resident population (DEFRA, 2016).

2. Mathilda’s mother cited crossing the busy road as the main reason for not allowing her to play in the woods.

3. The two villages have a large Jackdaw population.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant number ES/J500100/1).