Molly Toal, Lancashire Wildlife Trust The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside (otherwise known as LWT) have been running their Forest School Project in Manchester since 2015 and in Liverpool since 2017. Project officers work with urban schools for a year, delivering free Forest School sessions, offering accredited Level 3 Forest School Leadership training…
Andrew Millham Freelance Nature Writer The Cameron Bespolka Trust is a charity that has been set up in Cameron’s memory to inspire young people to love and appreciate nature. Cameron loved nature, especially birds. When young people experience nature, it gives them the opportunity to learn and fall in love with it. What do we…
After 50 Years of environmental education, what now? was the title of an address to the 2021 NAEE AGM by Prof. Justin Dillon, President of NAEE. What follows is Justin’s write up of his talk incorporating a critique of the DfE’s recently-published draft strategy document into his input. Justin suggests a practical and positive way…
Alex Collins Conservationist I am lucky enough to have grown up surrounded by wildlife, thanks to my Dad rewilding what used to be an old farmstead. Whilst I have always been fascinated by the biodiversity that we have at home, it is only more recently that I have begun to appreciate and respect it on a…
Hannah Brennan Year 4/5 Teacher at Greenacres Primary School, Shropshire & Carolyn Drever English and Outdoor Learning specialist ……………………………………. Change the Story is an Erasmus+ project with partners in Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Austria and the UK. ‘Change the Story empowers pupils to create the future they want: to explore how climate change impacts their lives…
“We must have a curriculum role, or we have nothing.” NAEE is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year to mark its foundation in September 1971. The background to this was the growth throughout the 1960s of an interest in what quickly became known as “the environment”. The most significant educational aspect of this was the 1965 Keele conference…
Philosophy for Children (P4C) ‘in’, ‘through’, ‘about’ and ‘using’ the outdoors – Gina Parker (Mullarkey) There are lots of studies into the effectiveness of P4C, including evidence to show that it boosts results in reading, writing and maths but, for me, the real benefit is teaching pupils to think for themselves and articulate those thoughts…
Richard Sheldrake & Michael J Reiss UCL Institute of Education Engaging with nature has been found to be associated with various benefits, including benefits for physical health and self-reported wellbeing (e.g. Rogerson, Barton, Bragg, & Pretty, 20171). However, most of the research to date has been undertaken with adults and much less is known about…
Isobel Cammish Teach the Future team & Patrick Kirwan Hammersmith Academy Recent studies have shown that only 4% of pupils surveyed think they know a lot about climate change and the environment, 68% of students want to know more, but 75% of teachers feel that they have not received adequate training on the subject 1.…
Stephanie West, Angela Marmont Centre, Natural History Museum Back in 2011 the House of Lords discussed the ‘Taxonomic Skills Shortage’. This followed years of discussion within natural history: our natural historians are ageing, where is the next generation, who will continue this work? Historically the UK has had a wealth of amateur and professional naturalists, able…