Children, Education and Nature-based Solutions: Research review report. REGREEN Deliverable D5.1
Creators: name: Læssøe, Jeppe
name: Anderson, Sally
name: Esbensen, Gertrud Lynge
name: Prévot, Anne-Caroline
name: Martin, Léo
name: Turpin, Sebastien
name: Hedblom, Marcus
name: Mårtensson, Fredrika
name: Sang, Åsa Ode
name: Wiström, Björn
Publisher: name: REGREEN Fostering nature‐based solutions for smart, green and healthy urban transitions in Europe and China
Year: 2020
Subjects: Children
Education
Nature Based Solutions

description: This report is written by scholars from WP5 as an internal REGREEN report with the aim of enabling knowledge exchange and development within WP5 as well as between WP5 and the other WPs in REGREEN.

The overall aim of WP5 is to investigate how children growing up in diverse urban environments perceive, access and use nature, and to research and develop educational programmes, tools and approaches that raise their awareness of, and participation in, NBS as vital resources for sustaining urban life.

The ambition of including children and education as part of NBS research is quite new and, for that reason, we approach it in an open and explorative way. It means that this report does not present a joint conceptual platform or protocol. Rather, it introduces different existing research perspectives, and summarizes knowledge from each of them, of relevance for our joint topic. By bringing our diverse theoretical as well as empirical knowledge into play across tasks, and importantly, into play with new research insights from our collaboration with the ULL’s, we expect to be able to crystallize new knowledge on the potentials of the interplay between education and NBS.

Summarizing a report is typically a matter of condensing the key conclusions from the already presented analyses. However, in this case the explorative and introductory character of the chapters makes the following summaries of each of them more like appetizers indicating their content.

In the first chapter, Sally Anderson sketches out a tentative conceptual framework and a set of key questions for exploring ‘children’s interaction with nature’. Inspired by Ingold, she conceives learning as a matter of attending and education as an act of world-making that includes fashioning a viable way forward that includes both change and continuity. In our challenging times, this approach opens for foundational questions about the role of education and point towards the need for rethinking.  In relation to REGREEN and NBS, such rethinking includes critical as well as explorative reflection on how we conceive ‘children’, ‘nature’ and ‘interaction’ when we talk about ‘children’s interaction with nature’ (the issue of task 5.1).  The chapter concludes with three specific research questions of relevance for WP5’s work on education, awareness and participation in relation to NBS.

The report’s second chapter is authored by Anne-Caroline Prévot, who, like Sally Anderson, addresses the issue of children’s relations to nature, however in this case with a particular focus on experiences of nature (EoN) in current urban settings. Global urbanization and modern lifestyles tend to reduce urban children’s opportunities for experiencing nature in their everyday life settings, at the same time as children to a lesser degree are scaffolded in ways that contribute to their experience of nature. Under these conditions, nature runs a risk of disappearing from urban citizens’ visions and expectations for a good life. Drawing on research from her own institution (MNHN), as well as contributions from other scholars, Prévot documents that experiences of nature (EoN) in everyday life influence knowledge on bio-diversity and nature conservation, as well as engagement in environmental issues. Furthermore, research has explored multiple benefits of EoN for children. The chapter concludes by relating the issue of EoN with NMHN’s ongoing research as part of REGREEN.

The third chapter, written by Léo Martin, Sébastien Turpin and Simon Bénateau, expands on the work of MNHN by presenting the Vigie-Nature-Ecole Citizen Science protocol. Developed by MNHN prior REGREEN, this protocol will be tested and elaborated during the course of the REGREEN project. Vigie-Nature Ecole aims at supporting and furthering schoolchildren’s understanding of the impact of human activities and global changes on ordinary biodiversity. As such it is an example of Nature-based Learning (NBL), which may help urban children reconnect with nature and, with this, motivate them to attend and learn from school-based NBS projects.

In the fourth chapter, Gertrud Lynge Esbensen presents and discusses research on Nature-based Learning (NBL) with specific focus on the potentials of strengthening children’s learning motivation and outcomes by applying digital technologies as learning tools in NBL processes. The chapter is partly based on existing research literature and partly on inspiration from Esbensen’s ongoing research into ways of applying digital technologies as educational tools for scaffolding children’s learning to see nature. To conclude, Esbensen introduces several ways of working with digital technologies in NBL and provides a list of potentially relevant apps.

The fifth chapter, authored by Fredrika Mårtensson, Åsa Ode-Sang, Björn Wiström and Marcus Hedblom from SLU, introduces their work with landscape laboratories and children’s play-scapes.  It focuses on the different qualities that various types of natural vegetation offer for children’s play, learning and well-being, and explores potential ways of co-creating urban nature for and with children. Drawing on research in environmental psychology, the authors highlight the importance of nature for children’s well-being, yet argue that as long as nature is not defined and biodiversity not quantified, it remains difficult to compare children’s interaction with nature across locations. For this reason, the SLU research team is working to map children’s play spaces through detailed exploration of the particularities of nature that support children’s play. They are also working to find suitable mapping/monitoring methods for biodiversity in such play-biotopes that also are cost efficient and easy to monitor without major knowledge of species. The chapter concludes with a tentative suggestion for carrying out such mapping/monitoring and a state of the art presentation of methods for involving children in creative processes of co-design of play-biotopes. In this, they touch upon the issue of children as agents in the development of NBS.

In chapter six, Jeppe Læssøe addresses both the potential of citizen science (cf. chapter 3) and the potentials and challenges of involving children as agents and learners in NBS (cf. chapter 5). He differentiates between educational approaches to citizen science and explores opportunities for combining citizen science with action-oriented environmental learning. In this, he opens for expanding nature-based learning through citizen science into learning by participating in the development of NBS in children’s own living areas.