Impact of outdoor place-based learning on elementary school students’ ability to make unsolicited observations about living organisms over time

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our research objective was to investigate whether a place-based educational intervention for elementary school students leads to a better ability to make unsolicited observations about living organisms. We tested the following prediction: Elementary school students who learn about living organisms outdoors in a familiar environment will be able to make more unsolicited observations about living organisms one week after the end of the intervention compared to those two months after the intervention ends. Our study was conducted in the province of Québec, Canada, which resulted in 116 students experiencing the same educational intervention from home. Based on individual telephone interviews, we compared elementary school students’ ability to make unsolicited observations about living organisms one week (Group A, n = 58) and two months (Group B, n = 58) after a place-based educational intervention in their home environment. We developed three emergent categories to analyse students’ place-based unsolicited observations about living organisms. We found that elementary school students who learned about living organisms in their home environment made more unsolicited observations about living organisms leading to factual descriptions two months after the end of the learning experience than those who were interviewed one week after the intervention.