The creator of the wonderful image is Catrin Welz-Stein of Germany who is an alarmingly talented graphic artist that creates digital collages. Doesn’t it make you want to look at things more closely? Good. I added Amelia’s awesome hobo-beaver and the headline because I wanted to use the image in our activity for the festival. It seemed like destiny that the beavers kit-sack matches she-sherlocks cl0ak. Isn’t that just a marriage made in heaven?
Destiny also released this study in time for my grant writing. How unbelievably lucky am I that this meta-analysis came out with exactly the right results?
Nature May Boost Learning Via Direct Effects on Learners
Kuo M, Barnes M and Jordan C (2019) Do Experiences With Nature Promote Learning? Converging Evidence of a Cause-and-Effect Relationship. Front. Psychol. 10:305. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00305
What emerged from this critical review was a coherent narrative: experiences with nature do promote children’s academic learning and seem to promote children’s development as persons and as environmental stewards – and at least eight distinct pathways plausibly contribute to these outcomes. Below, we discuss the evidence for each of the eight pathways and then the evidence tying nature to learning, personal development, and the development of stewardship.
This entire study was so wonderful you should really go read the whole thing. Very well laid out and a summary of the 8 learning paths that change in contact with nature. A paragraph on cause and effect towards the end had me in tears. I swear.
And second, spending time in nature appears to grow environmental stewards. Adults who care strongly for nature commonly attribute their caring to time, and particularly play, in nature as children – and a diverse body of studies backs them up (for review, see Chawla and Derr, 2012). Interestingly, the key ingredient in childhood nature experiences that leads to adult stewardship behavior does not seem to be conservation knowledge (knowledge of how and why to conserve). Although knowledge of how and why to conserve, which could presumably be taught in a classroom setting, has typically been assumed to drive stewardship behavior, it is relatively unimportant in predicting conservation behavior (Otto and Pensini, 2017). By contrast, an emotional connection to nature, which may be more difficult to acquire in a classroom, is a powerful predictor of children’s conservation behavior, explaining 69% of the variance (Otto and Pensini, 2017). Indeed, environmental attitudes may foster the acquisition of environmental knowledge (Fremery and Bogner, 2014) rather than vice versa. As spending time in nature fosters an emotional connection to nature and, in turn, conservation attitudes and behavior, direct contact with nature may be the most effective way to grow environmental stewards (Lekies et al., 2015).
Read that again, will you? Contact with nature drives learning about nature which in turn fosters stewardship. It isn’t lectures about biology, but outdoor positive experiences – like beaver festivals and watching beavers themselves, for example – that drive children to later care for the environment.
We care about what we know. Not ‘know’ like books. But ‘know’ as in play in, discover in, spend joyful time in – breathe in.
The future residents of the 
Nature finds a way of avoiding us. Whether it’s a fox crossing the road in the wee hours or squirrels making their commute on telephone wires, urban nature works hard to stay out of our path. It can be difficult for children to catch a glimpse of what is going on all around them. Research confirms that a positive experience with nature in childhood is more important to future stewardship than a wealth of biology lessons or academic lectures
Participating groups will be designated on the map and by a sign at the booth showing the animals and its tracks. When a child successfully matches the track card with a species they will be given an alibi card, showing the animal, its track and its innocence. On the back will be a part of a sentence giving the solution. When all six cards are collected, children will be helped to combine them and learn the answer. They can then return to the beginning and collect their prize for solving the mystery: an ornamental magnifying glass they can keep. They will then be invited to take a post quiz matching the tracks they have recently learned with the wildlife species in question.
Even if that was all there was, Just an inflammatory headline and a great photo, it would be enough to amuse me with endless Monty Python scenarios. Imagine how lucky I felt when the article continued?
