A recently-published report by Natural England concludes that supporting human and environmental health, needs both contact and connection with nature. Furthermore, a new national measure of nature connectedness shows connection to nature is good for people’s psychological wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours. Natural England says that nature connectedness is a relatively new and measurable psychological construct that describes…
A new paper from the Christina Kwauk at the Brookings Institute – Roadblocks to quality education in an era of climate change – has four goals. – First, it sets out to illustrate why more attention to, and investment in, education as a means of reducing risk and increasing informed action about climate change is needed, “lest the technofixes of…
This is another update from Natural England this time in relation to Nature Connectedness. . Human-nature relationships in context. Experiential, psychological, and contextual dimensions that shape children’s desire to protect nature M Giusti – PLoS ONE, 2019 What relationship with nature shapes children’s desire to protect the environment? This study crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries to explore this question.…
Yesterday the TES website had a feature on a survey carried out by Cambridge International Assessment (an exam board), as part of Global Perspectives Week. About 11,000 students aged 13-19 responded; 800 were from the UK. The TES reported that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are seen as more trustworthy than teachers on global issues such as climate change and poverty.…
The Policy Institute at King’s College London has published a report on what the UK public knows about environmental issues. Its title is: Britons hugely underestimate how hot planet has become and how much plastic waste is in the environment which neatly captures the problem. The study was accompanied by the publication of The Perils of Perception: Why We’re…
Ahead of next week’s parliamentary reception to promote attempts by Teach the Future to increase the effectiveness of climate change education, the Department for Education is resisting. A parliamentary question [ #4444 ] was asked by Darren Jones (Labour: Bristol North West) “To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of…
In today’s blog, Richard Dawson and Ben Ballin explore the work they are doing on climate change education within primary schools in the Change the Story project. Over the next three years, a group of six European education organisations will be exploring effective climate change education within upper primary schools as part of a project called Change the Story. Through…
The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA 14th February 2020 Dear Prime Minister We are writing in support of the letter recently sent to you by Zamzam Ibrahim, President of the NUS and SOS_UK, in which she called for your personal help in ensuring that the education…
Across Sweden, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands three collective residencies brought together an intergenerational group of people who, as Arjen Wals reports: “played, ate, (re)imagined, learned and created together” in order to design “alternative futures around a selected glocal (sic) issue”, and explore “what needs to be disrupted” to realise these imagined realities. Wals…
Is there one book that you think every environmental educator should read? Is it Silent Spring, perhaps? Or Walden? The Natural History of Selbourne, maybe, or A Sand County Almanac? Then there’s Last Child in the Woods, Small is Beautiful or The Web of Life. The Prelude, perchance, The Deserted Village, or The Mores? And Emile? And what about Bedford 2046, Marx’s…