Click here to read a round up from Natural England of evidence and reports, policy agenda developments, large scale delivery sector initiatives, resources and news items. This supports the Strategic Research Groups for Learning in Natural Environments and Outdoors for All to develop better coherence and collaboration in research and to improve links between research, policy and practice in these areas.
The following caught our eye:
The impact of school visits to WWT Wetland Centres on pupil attitudes to nature. Final Research Report:
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
This project aimed to understand the impact on primary school pupils of a visit to a WWT Wetlands Centre. Research was conducted with Year 4 pupils in 20 schools. The visit experience appears to inspire children in High Free School Meals schools in a number of ways and more so than among those from low Free School Meals schools with a number of key indicators showing an increase in interest in wildlife and nature immediately and up to 2 weeks after the visit. However this appears to be a short-term spike, after 6-12 months attitudes and activity appear to revert back to pre-visit proportions. The qualitative research suggests that the drop in interest and activity is as a result of a lack of continued related stimulus at home or in their neighbourhood
The Value of Learning Outdoors
S Pickering – Book Chapter
For learning beyond the classroom’s four walls to be truly valued, it needs to be considered by management, teachers, pupils and parents to be a fundamental element of every child’s formal education. It should be seen to be as normal a part of school life as teaching indoors. Teaching outdoors can be fun, stimulating, exciting and rewarding, and it can be all of these things without being seen as a treat, a reward, or a special Welly Wednesday.
Technology-nonhuman-child assemblages: reconceptualising rural childhood roaming.
Smith, T. and Dunkley, R. Children’s Geographies
This paper argues for reconceptualising how children use technology ‘outdoors’ as a technology-nonhuman-child assemblage, or roaming pathway. The paper illustrates how the agencies of technologies and plants are folded into children’s outdoor roaming. Combining visual methods, video analysis and qualitative geovisualisation, and in collaboration with the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority, this paper exposes how assemblages are contingently brought into being through the actions of what technologies, plants and children do together. We demonstrate how the agentic capacities of non-humans and technologies are assembled through children’s imaginative interaction with them, and how these imaginative interactions make such agencies visible.
Oxford Textbook of Nature and Public Health: The role of nature in improving the health of a population
Edited by Matilda van den Bosch, William Bird, and Foreword by Howard Frumkin
This book analyses the complexity of our human interaction with nature and includes sections for example epigenetics, stress physiology, and impact assessments. These topics are all interconnected and fundamental for reaching a full understanding of the role of nature in public health and wellbeing
But there’s lots more …