A Phenomenological Approach to Understand the Nature Based Experiences and its Influence on Holistic Development

Abstract

Children today have few opportunities for outdoor free play or regular contact with the natural world. Nowadays children's physical boundaries have shrunk due to a number of factors (Francis, 1991; Kytta, 2004). The culture of childhood that played outside is gone and children's everyday life has shifted to the indoors (Hart, 1999; Moore, 2004). As a result, children's opportunity for direct and spontaneous contact with nature is a vanishing experience of childhood. Not only have children's play environments dramatically changed in the last few decades, but also the time children have to play has decreased. Children need nature to grow up in a healthy way and be prepared for adult life. Child psychologists and psychotherapists are now convinced that contact between children and the natural environment is essential to ensure their balanced psychological and physical development as adolescents and adults (Ilaria, 2015). To understand the lived-in experiences of the children of previous generation with the nature, and how nature play a role in what they are today, variety of open-ended questions are chosen to elicit the most information possible in the time available. Qualitative research design (phenomenological approach) was adopted for this research. The phenomenological approach (realistic phenomenology) enables the researcher to understand the nature and meaning of an experience for a particular group of people in a particular setting (Moustakas, 1994) by encouraging individual participants to share their stories. The sample size selected for the present study is 20. Samples of only above 35+yrs is selected for the study who had experienced the phenomenon of nature based learning experience (specifically their exposure & experience with traditional games). Data were collected through individual interviews. In-depth interviews are optimal for collecting data on individuals' perspectives, and experiences are being explored.