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

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.

Cross-School Collaboration to Develop and Implement Self-Construction Greening Systems for Schools

“…A large-scale questionnaire survey by Yamanoi et al [ 7 ], involving over 600 elementary and secondary teachers, provided information on the factors that determine the implementation of nature-based education by science teachers. The main influencing factor identified in the survey was the degree of closeness to nature of the teachers themselves.…”

The research landscape of direct, sensory human–nature interactions

“…Many of the articles within this topic research environmental (or nature) education, as a way to improve the health outcomes of children through engagement with nature and engendering nature‐relatedness thereby helping to mitigate environmental degradation by future generations (e.g. Collado et al., 2020; Mullenbach et al., 2019; Yamanoi et al., 2021).…”

Education for sustainable development: Secondary school teacher's awareness and perception of integration

“…The contents within the biology curriculum relate to human activities and their impact on biodiversity concerning ecosystems and life on earth. The important relationship between biodiversity with the ecosystem and the impact of human activities on natural system depletion are predictors of sustainability learning content (e.g., Kanapathy et al, 2018; Morón‐Monge et al, 2020; Nurtian & Aminatun, 2019; Yamanoi et al, 2021). The participants perceive social science subjects as an empty area for integrating societal development‐related content.…”