Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This chapter discusses the value of connecting humans with nature, particularly
young people, and explores how restoration-based education (RBE) has the potential
for creating learning landscapes to enhance biodiversity and engage learners in signif-
icant ways where they live. Using multiple examples, the chapter highlights essential
planning considerations for RBE, including authentic youth and stakeholder partici-
pation, effective partnerships, curricular integration, and research and evaluation.
Through RBE, we can offer opportunities to enhance public understanding of scien-
tifically complex issues, support environmental protection, and value outdoor experi-
ences at all ages—experiences that are rooted in restoring native habitats for educa-
tional and ecological purposes.
The Benefits of School Greening and Interacting with Nature
Programs that emphasize meaningful outdoor experiences, such as the use of school-
yard habitat areas for ecological restoration and learning, allow young people to con-
nect with the natural world and, as Coffey (2001) writes, “There can be no better
place than our schools for beginning humanity's greatest task—that of reconnecting
ourselves to the natural world.” With seventy-six million nursery school to college-age
students enrolled in more than 125 million public and private schools in the United
States and many more around the globe, we are fortunate to have systems that afford
opportunities to bring environmental education (EE) to many students and, thereby,
have the prospect to develop a more ecologically literate public. Such opportunities
can also help avoid what Pyle (1993) describes as the “extinction of experience” with
natural settings (147). For, as Nabhan (1994) observes, “We need to find ways to let
children roam beyond the pavement, to gain access to vegetation and earth that allows
them to tunnel, climb, or even fall. And because formal playgrounds are the only out-
doors that many children experience anymore, should we be paying more attention to
planting, and less to building on them?” (9).
Research suggests that interacting with nature enhances memory and attention
among young adults (Tennessen and Cimprich 1995; Hartig, Kaiser, and Bowler
2001) and older adults (Ottosson and Grahn 2005) in various contexts. Research by
Berman, Jonides, and Kaplan (2008) found that brief interactions with nature result in
marked improvement in cognitive functioning, while Wells (2000) discovered that the
cognitive functions of urban youth are improved by “greenness” at home. Indeed,
some researchers argue that depriving young people of intimate interactions with the
natural world can have detrimental intellectual, biological, emotional, and develop-
mental effects (Kellert and Wilson 1993; Kellert 1997, 2002; Pyle 2002; Taylor and
Kuo 2006; Bell and Dyment 2008).
Hartig and colleagues (2003) concluded that public health strategies should in-
clude a natural environment component, particularly in an ever-increasing urbanized
world that includes mounting health care costs and escalating environmental degra-
dation. Other research suggests landscape features affect motor development and
physical play among youth (Fjørtoft and Sageie 2000; Fjørtoft 2004; Dyment and Bell
2008; Lucas and Dyment 2010). All this research suggests there is a critical need to
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