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Does technology make the outdoors more appealing?

Posted in Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning on April 26, 2013| 1 Comment »

An analysis of outdoor activities by Deborah J. Chavez, a specialist in outdoor recreation research, suggests this to be the case.

Chavez writes about student reactions to selected outdoor activities in Youth Day in Los Angeles: Evaluating the Role of Technology in Children’s Nature Activities.

The Youth Day activities described in Chavez (2009) include two technology-dependent activities and two activities in which technology did not play a role. The format for each activity was the same. Each activity was designed to have a 5-minute introduction, a 30-minute activity, a 15-minute wrap-up, and a 10-minute transition to the next activity. Youth Day participants ranged in age from 6-17. Thirty-eight youth from the Los Angeles area were divided into eight groups and rotated through each activity on a pre-planned schedule designed by Chavez. Two trained facilitators were assigned to each group. Observers were stationed at each activity to record participant’s reactions and comments.

Here is a brief review of the Youth Day activities described in Chavez (2009):

Technology-Dependent Activities

Camera Safari:
Participants took photos of things that interested them as they walked along a nature trail. Photos were printed and categorized for analysis.

Geocache:
Participants looked for hidden treasure along a nature trail using GPS units.

Technology-Free Activities

Etchings:
Participants completed rubbings and created etchings.

Nature Scavenger Hunt:
Participants received a list of natural items to look for along a trail.

Each activity was evaluated by participants, observers and facilitators. Participants rated each activity using a color-coded rating system where a Green rating meant participants liked an activity, a Yellow rating meant participants thought an activity was “OK” or that they were undecided about their opinion of an activity. A Red rating meant participants did not like an activity.

The technology-dependent activities received the highest approval ratings from participants — Geocache (92%), Camera Safari (86%). The Nature Scavenger Hunt and the Etchings activity received approval ratings of 76% and 62%, respectively. These results, in addition to the thorough notes and feedback of facilitators and observers suggest that using technology in outdoor nature activities may be a good way to encourage young people to engage with nature.

To read a full analysis of Youth Day, including a review of background literature related to outdoor education, how Chavez designed Youth Day, and Chavez’s helpful discussion of planning and logistical issues for informal science educators interested in conducting similar one-day events, look for Chavez (2009) at an institution that subscribes to JSTOR. Conduct a search by country on JSTOR’s website. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the journal Children, Youth and Environments for access to all back issues of this journal.

Literature Cited
Chavez, Deborah J. 2009. Youth Day in Los Angeles: Evaluating the role of technology in children’s nature activities. Children, Youth and Environments. 19(1): 102-124

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Outdoor Education, Plant Awareness

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How can we experience plants differently?

Posted in drawing, Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning on March 8, 2013| 9 Comments »

How can we help children experience plants differently before we teach them that they are insignificant?

This heavy question is rooted in the sobering reality that adults teach children how to think about plants and how to treat them.

In Where did you go? The forest. What did you see? Nothing., Lynda H. Schneekloth discusses how adults send conflicting messages about plants to children and how the dominant message to children is that vegetation can be categorized as “nothing” (Schneekloth, 1989). Examples of conflicting messages adults send to children are “vegetables are good for you, eat them…we need to build something here, bulldoze the trees” (Schneekloth, 1989).

How did vegetation become so invisible?

Schneekloth (1989) presents three factors contributing to the unfortunate status of plants in our society. She explains that plants make up too much of the background. Because there are so many plants, they have suffered the fate of any element, when in abundance, that forms a background. Because they are the background, plants make what is different appear to be more important (Schneekloth, 1989).

Also contributing to the problem of visibility is how people experience plants in their real lives compared to what we know about them at the scientific level. Regardless of how we’ve come to know plants scientifically, in our real lives plants exist only to serve us (Schneekloth, 1989). This reality contributes directly to the the third issue making plants invisible and this issue is, it’s all about us.

Because we have come to know plants so well through research, Schneekloth (1989) says this has created a feeling of superiority that prevents us from seeing the extent to which we are dependent upon plants. She explains that our ability to make plants grow and appear in ways that suit us has created a “false sense of security” (Schneekloth, 1989) and has left us feeling in control of our world.

With plants existing only in the background and with our anthropormorphic view of the world, how are plants perceived by humans?

Schneekloth investigated this by asking two groups of people (environmental educators and grad students studying architecture) to draw a picture of “an experience, place or activity” (Schneekloth, 1989) that was key to their forming a relationship with nature. The details of her study can be reviewed in her paper. The big takeaway from her investigation is this — when people drew their nature experience, they placed humans in a scene with vegetation; when they talked about their experience, the actions taken by humans was the focus. Schneekloth (1989) observed that drawing gave plants a presence, while language rendered plants invisible. She observed that in a drawing, plants are “something” (Schneekloth, 1989) because they are given form.

There is much more to learn from Schneekloth in her article about the value of vegetation. Look for the journal Children’s Environments Quarterly at your local college library.

So let’s get back to that big question…

How can we help children experience plants differently before we teach them that they are insignificant?

Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Literature Cited
Schneekloth, Lynda H. 1989. Where did you go? The forest. What did you see? Nothing. Children’s Environments Quarterly. 6(1):14-17

Related
Children’s books cited by Schneekloth that give plants a foreground presence:

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Richard Howard (2000)
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkein (1965)
A Wind in the Door by Madelaine L’Engle (1973)

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Preschool Botany: Play, Explore, Draw

Posted in botany, drawing, Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning on February 8, 2013|

With spring and Earth Day fast-approaching, here is a resource you’ll want to refer to the next time you need to talk about plants with preschool children. It will also help you introduce young audiences to the subjects of inheritance and traits.

In Plants, Alike and Different professor Kathy Cabe Trundle and doctoral students Mandy McCormick Smith and Katherine N. Mollohan explain how they use a learning cycle involving play, exploration, and discussion to teach students how plants and insects are alike and different. Below is a general overview of their process. For a thorough review that includes the prompts they use in class and how they bridge one activity with another, read their enlightening paper.

During the Play Phase of the learning cycle, Trundle et al. (2013) provide children with unstructured playtime in a play area that has been stocked with silk flowers and plants. The authors state they often observe children pretending to pick flowers and pretending to plant a garden. Trundle et al. (2013) explain that unstructured playtime with plants gives children time to think about plants and to ask questions about them. Instructor-guided learning begins later in this phase and begins with a conversation about how humans are similar and different. This then leads to a conversation about how plants are similar and different (Trundle, et al., 2013).

During the Exploration Phase, students compare two types of marigolds, two types of pansies and two types of coleus plants to make observations about flower size, flower number, leaf shape, leaf color, textures, stem length and stem shape (Trundle, et al., 2013). Children document observations by drawing them, by creating leaf rubbings and by tracing leaves. The visual data recorded by children are then shared, much like how works-in-progress are shared at the end of a botanical illustration workshop. The sharing of data enables students to more easily see patterns in color, shape, size etc.

This visual information created during the Exploration Phase is paired with detailed discussion during the Discussion Phase of the learning cycle. Student observations are grouped and then arranged in a graphic organizer (i.e., chart). This chart helps students compare traits for each plant they studied.

The process of observing similarities and differences described above helps establish a foundation for more detailed conversations about traits and inheritance, concepts that are the focus of Part II of this activity by Trundle, et al. (2013). A link to their activity about inheritance is included in their paper.

Also included in their paper is a link to the rubric the authors use to evaluate student drawings and assess student understanding. The rubric serves as a checklist of objectives and targeted behaviors and is based on a project about helping children draw and sketch from observation from Illinois Projects in Practice at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Published just this week, Trundle et al. (2013) can be purchased online for 99¢.

Literature Cited
Trundle, Kathy Cabe, and Katherine N. Mollohand and Mandy McCormick Smith. 2013. Plants, alike and different. Science and Children. 50(6): 52-57

Related Resources

Look Once, Look Again – Fruit and Seeds by David M. Schwqrtz and Dwight Kuhn
Look Once, Look Again – Plant Leaves by David M. Schwartz
Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld and Priscilla Lamont
Trait-based Learning with Trading Cards

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Plant Traits, Conservation, Trading Cards

Posted in botanical art, Education, general botany, Learning Opportunities, nature, teaching and learning on January 30, 2013|

Jay Fitzsimmons, whose trading card activity we learned about in Friday’s teaching and learning column, has provided links to articles about plant traits associated with conservation issues. How can this new information be used to create new trading card activities?

If you are looking for more ideas about how to use trading cards in your classroom or program, read comments posted in response to Jay’s article and add your own to continue this conversation.

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How Children Respond to Nature

Posted in environmental education, Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning on January 18, 2013|

In a review of the environmental education literature, professors Donald J. Burgess and Jolie Mayer-Smith found that research about childhood experiences in wilderness settings was lacking, as were data describing what an active love of nature looks like in young children. In response to this, they created a study in which they documented the reactions and comments of urban students in a wilderness setting. They discuss their findings in Listening to Children: Perceptions of Nature and address how children perceive nature and identify the types of experiences that encourage a love of the natural world.

Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) used the framework of environmental values created by Stephen R. Kellert to evaluate children’s reactions to nature. Kellert is the first person to methodically assess and classify how people view nature (Burgess and Mayer-Smith, 2011).

The categories of environmental values created by Kellert are very interesting and they need to be explained in order to discuss Burgess and Mayer-Smith’s findings. Kellert describes values as “the convergence of emotion and cognition” (Burgess and Mayer-Smith, 2011). Through his categories of nature values, he explains the different ways individuals value and perceive nature. Here is a summary of Kellert’s value categories as described by Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011):

Scientific-Ecological Valuing

Naturalistic Valuing – Interests focus on exploring and discovery

Symbolic Valuing – When nature is viewed as a source for language or imagination

Aesthetic Valuing – Formation of emotional connections to nature

Humanistic Valuing – Similar to Aesthetic

Utilitarian Valuing – Viewing nature as a source for materials or reward

Moralistic Valuing – When ethical and spiritual connections are formed with nature

Dominionistic Valuing – Viewing nature as something to master or control

To conduct their study of how children perceive nature, Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) observed two classes of 5th grade students (n=35, age 10-11) while they attended Mountain School, a three-day environmental education class held in the wilderness of North Cascades National Park in Washington. Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) worked closely with graduate students, parents, rangers and classroom teachers during their study. They conducted pre-interviews one week before the Mountain School program began, conducted post-interviews one month after the program ended, documented children’s reactions in the field during hikes, and reviewed student journals containing students’ field notes, checklists, worksheets, creative writing entries and drawings.

While using Kellert’s framework, Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) found that the framework wasn’t broad enough for their study so they added their own themes and sub themes to each category. In the end, they added 33 themes and sub themes to the framework (Burgess and Mayer-Smith, 2011).

A thorough analysis of the data revealed that the Mountain School program changed children’s perspectives and how they viewed nature. Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) saw changes in students’ scientific-ecologocial, naturalistic and symbolic valuing of nature. Students began the program making general observations about nature. During the program they demonstrated an understanding of ecological relationships and ended the program being able to reflect about nature in a creative way (Burgess and Mayer-Smith, 2011).

The authors also observed changes in how students connected with nature on an emotional level. While they began the program having objective and indifferent thoughts about nature, they ended the program talking passionately about their first-hand experiences and the students who at first had some level of fear about nature had their fear reduced by the end of the program (Burgess and Mayer-Smith, 2011).

Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) also observed students gaining a new respect for nature and the ability to communicate this new respect to others.

Learning Experiences Encouraging Change

What type of experiences encourage the type of change described above?

Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) claim that direct experiences with nature encourage emotional connections and change how children view the natural world. They also state that physically challenging experiences and reflective experiences reinforce children’s emotional connections with nature (Burgess and Mayer-Smith, 2011).

Burgess and Mayer-Smith (2011) provide a thorough explanation about these experiences in their paper and also include student quotes as examples of how student perceptions were changed by the Mountain School program.

Listening to Children: Perceptions in Nature can be viewed online and is available for download as a 17-page PDF. Included with the article are the pre- and post-interview questions used by the authors.

Literature Cited
Burgess, Donald J. and Jolie Mayer-Smith. 2011. Listening to children: perceptions of nature. Journal of Natural History Education and Experience.
5: 27-43. Web. <http://naturalhistorynetwork.org/journal/articles/listening-to-children-perceptions-of-nature> [accessed 17 January 2013]

Related

Outdoor Education and Plant Blindness

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Illustrations and the Environment

Posted in Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning on November 16, 2012|

Children’s picture books contain more illustrations of built environments than natural environments.

This is the finding of Williams et al. (2012) in The Human-Environment Dialog in Award-winning Children’s Picture Book.

J. Allen Williams Jr., Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Palmer, Philip Schwadel and Deanna Meyler evaluated 296 Caldecott award-winning books to investigate how the environment was portrayed in children’s book illustrations. Williams et al. (2012) evaluated titles winning the award between 1938 – 2008 and explain they chose to study Caldecott winners because the American Library Association considers these titles to have the best illustrations and because these titles are circulated widely among libraries. The authors explain they chose to study illustrations in children’s books specifically because they “play an important role in childhood socialization” (Williams, et al. 2012). The Caldecott award was first issued in 1938 (Williams, et al. 2012).

During their investigation of 70 years’ worth of titles, the authors evaluated 8,067 images. When evaluating images, Williams et al. (2012) recorded the following:

The presence or absence of natural, built or modified environments.
The presence or absence of domestic, wild or anthropomorphic animals.
The presence of interaction between humans and the environment.
The negative portrayal of nature or animals.
Story themes and objectives

Here is a summary of the main findings resulting from the authors’ statistical analysis of illustrations:

Built environments are present more often than natural environments. While both environments were represented more or less equally between 1948-1958, the presence of natural environments began a dramatic decline after 1960.
In 1953 built environments began to be depicted as the primary environment more often than natural environments. Prior to this, natural environments were more likely to be the primary environment.
Wild animals are more likely to be present in an image than domestic animals.
Wild animals are more likely to be the subject of a story than domestic animals.
The probability of either wild or domestic animals being depicted in an illustration declined over the 70-year study period.
Human interaction with nature or animals of any kind is not common and became even less so during the years 2000-2008.
Negative images of natural environments began to increase in the 1950s and peaked in the 1980s.
Negative images of built environments increased in the 1980s.
Negative images of domestic animals increased throughout the study period.

You might be asking yourself, “What made negative images ‘negative’? ”

Illustrations were coded as negative if they mostly showed “unpleasant or potentially dangerous natural conditions” or served “as critical commentary on environmental problems” (Williams, et al. 2012).

In discussing the findings above (and many others), Williams et al. (2012) conclude that children’s understanding and appreciation of nature is not being nurtured through the children’s books they studied. Neither is children’s understanding of the role human’s play in the environment.

The authors are concerned about illustrations in children’s books because children’s books reflect what is going on in society (Williams, et al. 2012). The authors hypothesize that two factors may be contributing to they way the environment is presented in children’s books: 1) the public’s indifference towards environmental issues and 2) the public’s declining exposure to natural environments. They make a strong case for both in their paper citing independent research and Gallup poll data. To read more about their analysis of these issues and to view a full account of their findings, get a PDF of their article
(24-hour access costs $35) or look for a copy at your local college library.

Literature Cited
Williams, J.Allen and Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Palmer, Philip Schwadel and Deanna Meyler. 2012. The human-environment dialog in award-winning children’s picture books. Sociological Inquiry. 82(1): 145-159

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Informal Botany Education Can Improve Plant Recognition Skills

Posted in Teaching & Learning, teaching and learning on September 28, 2012| 2 Comments »

In the introduction to her research paper, Botanical Knowledge of a Group of South Carolina Elementary School Students, Chandra L. Cooper shares a quote by anthropologist Eugene S. Hunn in which he pronounces the extent of Americans ignorance of the natural environment.

His comment begs the questions: How ignorant are they? Can this be reversed?

Cooper addressed these questions, in part, by studying the botanical knowledge of a small group of elementary school children. To determine how much the students knew about plants and to determine if this knowledge could be improved through informal learning experiences, Cooper created a way to quantify the students’ prior botanical knowledge and created a three-month program in informal botany education whose aim was to improve students’ knowledge of plants.

Cooper’s research focused on how well a group of elementary school students could identify trees, flowers, weeds/wild plants, garden crops, vines, shrubs/bushes, water plants, house plants, grasses and “other plants” (Cooper, 2008), plants not included in the previous categories.

From December 2006 through May 2007, Cooper (2008) worked with children enrolled in a small elementary school located in rural South Carolina. The sample population (n=11) consisted of eight males and three females, age 9-12 years. Of the eleven students, data for ten were analyzed.

Cooper (2008) administered a three-part pre-assessment survey to determine students’ prior experiences with nature, their ability to name plants and to sort them into categories, and their ability to identify 60 species of plants shown in a slide show. For the post-assessment survey, students repeated the same tasks. They also responded to questions in a verbal interview conducted by Cooper.

The pre-assessment inquiries revealed that nine of the students had a vegetable or flower garden at home and that eight of them had experience performing yard work (Cooper, 2008). Pre-assessment surveys also revealed the children preferred outdoor activities over indoor activities, most had participated in recycling practices in their home, and that the students were able to identify at least two uses of plants (Cooper, 2008). When asked to list plants in the 10 categories outlined above, students listed an average of 10 trees, 6 flowers, 9 garden crops, and 3 weeds; their lists for plants in the remaining categories were very short, containing 1-2 items each (Cooper, 2008). When asked to identify plants in a slide show containing 60 species of plants (students were allowed to view the slide show at their own pace), students could on average identify 33% of the plants in the slide show, with all of them correctly identifying cotton, potato, rose, strawberry and bamboo (Cooper, 2008). Students could identify garden crop plants 70% of the time, multiple-use plants 60% of the time and wild plants 18% of the time (Cooper, 2008).

Following the pre-assessment surveys, students attended a three-month after-school program in which they participated in hands-on activities about plants and studies about plants in their local area (Cooper, 2008). Upon completing the program, students could list significantly more garden crop plants than they did in the pre-assessment survey (Cooper, 2008). They also listed significantly fewer shrubs/bushes, a development Cooper (2008) says can be explained by the students’ ability to better categorize plants as a result of their participation in the after-school program (see Cooper’s paper for a detailed review of student responses).

Post-assessment surveys also indicate this small group of elementary school students could identify correctly 55% of the plants in the slide show — up from 33% (Cooper, 2008). When analyzing the average number of correct responses made by students, Cooper (2008) found that students could identify correctly 91% of garden crop plants (up from 70%), 33% of ornamental plants (up from 15%), 42% of wild plants (up from 18%), and 80% of multiple-use plants (up from 60%).

The three-month program implemented by Cooper lead to an increased interest in plants and increased student ability to identify correctly various categories of plants. Student interest in plants was assessed during the post-assessment interviews. Enhanced student interest in plants was confirmed by the types of comments students made during the interview. Comments such as, “There are a lot more plants in the environment than I think, and I’ve just got to look closer” (Cooper, 2008).

Cooper’s results indicate that a program in informal botany education can lead to increased knowledge about plants and to an enhanced interest in the plant world.

Read more student comments about plants.

Download a copy of Cooper’s article by clicking on the link below. The article is free to download. The journal Ethnobotany Research and Applications is published online. Its contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Literature Cited
Cooper, Chanda L. 2008. Botanical knowledge of a group of South Carolina elementary school students. Ethnobotany Research and Applications. 6: 121-127. Web. <http://lib-ojs3.lib.sfu.ca:8114/index.php/era/article/view/166>
[accessed 28 September 2012]

Studies of Botanical Knowledge
In her introduction, Cooper (2008) discusses how the botanical knowledge of children in indigenous societies is greater than that of children in the US, in the United Kingdom, and in Switzerland. She cites studies reviewed previously in this column. Click on the links to these studies to learn more.