Fourth graders’ connectedness to nature - Does cultural background matter?

Abstract

Many refugees have entered European classrooms recently, making the classrooms culturally heterogeneous. Some key challenges in the future include productively dealing with different cultures within a country that may have different relationships to nature while still promoting Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Previous studies show that having different relationships to nature leads to different environmental attitudes and that positive attitudes are a prerequisite for pro-environmental behavior. Environmental educators should take these findings into account. Despite the topicality of immigration in Europe, students with different cultural backgrounds living in the same country had not yet been investigated with regard to their connectedness to nature. Therefore, we surveyed German fourth graders (N = 1585, average age = 9.18 years) with different cultural backgrounds and used the Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scale to measure their connectedness to nature. The students were categorized into seven different cultural areas: Northwestern Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa. We examined the cultural association with INS through two-level modeling, which also integrated gender, class affiliation, region (rural vs. Urban), and time spent in forests. While the cultural background showed no significant association with INS, the frequency of forest visits did. Environmental educators should therefore focus on genuine nature experiences to foster connectedness to nature.