Environmental education journal features

Mayfield Primary School’s involvement with arts and wellbeing charity Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination started six years ago with the project called ArtScapers: an arts education programme that brings artists together with local communities to foster creative health for people of all ages.

Ocean and climate are intrinsically linked. The ocean is a major driver and amplifier to our climate system and the ocean is impacted by changes to our climate. As project manager of the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification (OA Alliance), I’ve thought a lot about how to communicate climate-ocean impacts to broader audiences, including policy and decision makers.

After decades of conservation research in various landscapes in Kenya, a small group of Kenyan nationals founded the African Conservation Centre (ACC) in 1995. ACC’s work is mainly focused in four landscape areas in Kenya: Amboseli, Maasai Mara, Laikipia and the South Rift.

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 for teachers and installing outdoor classrooms, all thanks to support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery.

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?