What Environmental and Personal Factors Determine the Implementation Intensity of Nature-Based Education in Elementary and Lower-Secondary Schools?

Takahiro Yamanoi,Tadashi Kanai,Masashi Soga,Maldwyn J Evans,Kazuaki Tsuchiya,Tomoyo F Koyanagi

doi:10.3390/su13179663

Abstract

As society becomes increasingly urbanized, children are becoming much less likely to experience nature. This progressive disengagement from the natural world, often termed the ‘extinction of experience’, has been viewed both as a key public health issue and one of the most fundamental obstacles to halting global environmental degradation. School education has an important role in mitigating and reversing the ongoing extinction of experience. Here, we examine the role of several factors that determine the implementation intensities of nature-based education by science teachers in the classrooms of both primary and secondary schools. We performed a large-scale questionnaire survey comprising 363 elementary and 259 lower-secondary schoolteachers. Several factors predicted the implementation intensity of nature-based education in schools. The most important predictor was teachers’ levels of nature-relatedness, with nature-orientated teachers being more likely to provide nature-based education in their classes. Levels of teachers’ ecological knowledge, frequency of childhood nature experiences, and greenness within the school were also positively associated with the implementation intensity of education. Our results suggest that, to promote nature-based education in schools, it is important to increase schoolteachers’ nature-relatedness and ecological knowledge, as well as to provide more green spaces within schools.

Highlights

Elementary schoolteachers adhered to the recommended time teaching the unit more than secondary schoolteachers (p < 0.0001, Figure 3; Table S1)
They spent more time outdoors (p < 0.0001), more time observing nature (p < 0.0001), and more time discussing the ecology of nature (p < 0.001) with their students than secondary schoolteachers (Figure 3)
More green space within elementary school grounds was significantly positively associated with the time that teachers spent outdoors, observing nature and discussing ecology (Figure 4; Table S1)

Summary

Introduction

Much academic and popular concern has been raised over the ‘extinction of experience’—the ongoing loss of direct interactions that people have with nature [1,2,3,4]. People with few direct interactions with nature do not gain the substantial health benefits that human–nature interactions provide [5,6,7]. Fewer natural experiences during childhood can result in a reduced willingness to support pro-conservation policies and actions [4,8,9]. As a result, this creates a feedback loop towards a progressive loss of the human-nature relationship that is detrimental to both

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