Bringing our inner and outer natures together: A scoping study to explore the deliberate development of children’s nature connectedness, wellbeing, attention and self-understanding skills through outdoor, multi-sensory nature connection activities

Abstract

It is hard to understate the urgency for human populations to reconnect with nature and begin to take better care of the natural elements which support and sustain our lives (Ives et al., 2017). There is an established evidence base that shows feeling connected to nature benefits us in many ways and there is accordingly an increasing call for children and adults to (re) connect with nature (Barrable & Booth, 2020a; Louv, 2005). Evidence, however, also shows many children and young people (CYP) are feeling increasingly disconnected from nature. Schools could be an obvious place to promote CYP spending more time in nature to foster their nature connectedness (NC). There are limited studies exploring the impact of nature-based interventions delivered in the context of school settings.
A systematic literature review (Chapter 2) was carried out to investigate whether NC could be developed in CYP within an educational setting. A second research question asked whether programmes designed to increase children’s NC would also impact behaviours for learning (BFL) (e.g., attention and social skills). As an insufficient number of studies were carried out within schools, this criterion was expanded to consider all settings working with CYP between the ages of 0 and 29. The databases of ERIC, PsycINFO and Web of Science were searched, and 21 eligible studies were identified. This literature review identified many potential ways in which NC can be developed in CYP and that there are associated benefits to BFL. Although few of the studies were carried out on school sites, there are a number of realistically implementable and often low-cost ways in which NC could be deliberately enhanced in education settings.
A scoping study (Chapter 3) was carried out to investigate the impact of a programme that uses multi-sensory nature connection activities to improve NC, wellbeing and BFL (specifically attention and self-understanding (including self-regulation and sensorial attunement)). Participants were aged between seven and ten years of age, from four mainstream schools on the south coast of England. Teachers delivered up to 12 sessions over a four-week time period during the summer term of 2023. Skew in the data suggests that children’s answers may have been influenced by social desirability bias and a dichotomous way of responding. Attention scores in one school were shown to significantly improve after taking part in the programme. There was no significant impact on NC, wellbeing or self-understanding scores. The pattern of results suggests that participants may have moved from being unconsciously unskilled to consciously unskilled in the area of self-understanding. This research evaluated a novel curriculum designed to support educators in delivering nature-based activities in schools. As a scoping study, it identified the feasibility of the programme, and recognised challenges. The principal limitation was linked to the use of scales, and the main recommendation is to include qualitative measures alongside quantitative in future evaluations.

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ORCID for Marcus Grace: orcid.org/0000-0002-1949-1765

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