There’s no planet b – activities with nature, your child’s learning and caring for the planet
There is growing interest in the role nature plays in learning, with many people believing that spending time with nature not only helps children (and adults) care more about the planet but also helps them learn more generally. A research review, published in February 2019, concluded that this belief can be backed by research evidence.
On our podcast we spoke to Charlotte from Parents For Future, an organisation supporting parents to campaign for climate action.
She described the complicated emotions of raising children while aware of the climate crisis - and they shared some small changes or action you can take to reduce that anxiety. Listen to the podcast here, and read on to see how we use research to support our ideas - and to support you.
It can be really difficult, with so much information and opinions surrounding you both online and in real life, to work you what information to trust. That’s why as well as drawing on our years of experience, and experts in their field such as Charlotte, we look into the latest research to stay up to date with current evidence.
You can be sure if you read something in the app that we’ve checked our sources – and we’ll always change or update articles if there is new information available.
We often start, as parents and as child development experts, with an idea of what we think is right or best. We then investigate the evidence to check those beliefs.
Sometimes, we find what we thought was true has some basis in research but has been widely misinterpreted; sometimes recent research, often with new approaches, hasn’t found evidence to support a widely held view, and then there are times when we see research that supports what we’ve seen in our work with children and families.
The research review about learning and nature is one of those most exciting times, where we read about the topic and thought, “Yes, that’s what we’ve seen and what we expected!”
What’s a research review?
There are different approaches to carrying out reviews of research, but they all share the aim of summarising what has been found in a particular area, describing how strong the evidence is for these findings and making suggestions for future questions to be considered.
Researchers will start with a theory or key question, and then look deeply into all the available research studies to see if the evidence supports (or answers) their starting thought.
In this review, the researchers looked at the overarching question;[1]
“Do nature experiences promote children’s learning and development?”
It’s not always easy to answer a question like this. Researchers often can’t say that one thing causes another, as opposed to the two things simply happening together frequently (correlation).
Research often comes to conclusions which use terms like ‘associated with’ which shows that research found a link – but that the study wasn’t designed in a way that can show for sure that one thing caused another to happen.
In this review, the researchers were able to confidently say that there is evidence for some ‘cause and effect’ relationships, which means that they can say that experiences in nature affect some aspects of learning and development.
What are the cause-and-effect relationships these researchers found?
The research included in this review was carried out in school or with adults, so will need to be tested with younger children too – but the findings are still interesting!
The researchers found that nature-based instruction was more effective than traditional instruction and that this is linked to both being in a “greener” setting and to the approaches taken, so more active hands-on activities leading to better learning.
They also found more than 50 studies which suggested spending time in nature is associated with pro-environmental behaviour, so showing that people who spend more time in nature are more likely to do things that protect the planet.
What does all this mean for you and your child?
This review suggests that spending time with nature is likely to support your child’s learning, so the first thing might be to think about how you can get more nature into your play time and spend more time outdoors.
You can look at your activities page for ideas of things to do outside and with nature which will help you support your child to master their active skills. If you like the look of an activity but it would usually be done inside, there’s no reason not to change it up and find a way to make it work outdoors instead - you might both enjoy it in a whole new way!
References:
Kuo, M., Barnes, M., Jordan, C. (2019). ‘Do experiences with nature promote learning? Converging evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship’. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00305