Environmental Education Feature

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.

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 whole new level. Learning about the natural world in school and now in my biology degree, I am increasingly realising the extent to which our landscape is so deprived of its native wildlife.

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 clearly.

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 the benefits to children.

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.

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?

I first realised I was living in the middle of a mass annual amphibian migration when I was nine. Every February, thousands of toads, frogs and newts would make their halting way across the road outside our house, all going in one direction.

This article was first published in 2020 in Vol 123 of the NAEE journal. The latest Environmental Education journal is available free to NAEE members. What is the power of our words and how can we harness their power to create a better world for wildlife? Many of [...]

As Maria Puig de le Bellacasa1 argued recently in her plenary at the Royal Geographic Society Conference in London, ‘soil’ is a perfect metaphor for our troubled relationship with the ‘Earth’. So, that means, for urban ES educators, teaching about mud is more important than ever.

Emily Munn, Urbanwise.London Urbanwise aims to promote active outdoor learning in the local area, help young people communicate their views and ideas on environmental issues which concern them and bring people together to examine issues around environmental change. Urban ES education is often associated with building social connections, trust and [...]

Beth Collier, Director of Wild in the City Wild in the City supports the wellbeing of urban residents through relationships with nature in London and beyond. We offer programmes in woodland living skills, natural history, walks and ecotherapy; using the skills of our ancestors to develop a deeper relationship with [...]

Nicola Simpson, Urban Wildlife Manager at Gloucester Wildlife Trust Gloucestershire is often considered to be a rural county, full of countryside and nature. So many people might be confused to find out that Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust (GWT) has an urban programme of work. The county has two major settlements and [...]