Education Initiatives
Education is embedded as an integral part of this research and driven by the third research question:
How can education be used to support children in developing positive emotional and behavioral responses towards nature?
After class nature tours, the research team will review videos and identify emotional and behavioral responses to determine what type of educational strategy would be useful for supporting children in their environmental identity development. In collaboration with classroom teachers, graduate students, undergraduate students, and community cultural bearers lessons will be developed to promote children's self-regulation in nature, develop children's environmental empathy, nurture nature connectedness, and teach Indigenous cultural values in relation to the environment and place.
The EID model has also inspired the creation of education resources beyond these research contexts. Learn more in Resources for Educators.
Education Strategy #1: Promoting children’s self-regulation in nature. The aim of this action-research strategy is to identify and remediate specific emotional tensions and support children in self-regulating their emotional and behavioral responses in nature. Cognitive appraisal is one technique that can be used for regulating negative emotional reactions (Hinton et al., 2008). Educators play an important role in reducing stress or fear in learning environments through supporting children in communicating their difficulties, establishing an environment where it is okay to make mistakes, and helping children develop strategies to cope with and overcome difficult situations (Hinton et al., 2008).
Education Strategy #2: Developing children’s empathy in nature. The development of children’s empathy in nature involves sensitivity, ecological understandings, and responsible actions (Chawla, 1998; Metzger & McEwen, 1999). These elements are similarly described in the Environmental Identity Development model: Trust in Nature vs. Mistrust in Nature, Spatial Autonomy vs. Environmental Shame, Environmental Competency vs. Environmental Disdain, Environmental Action vs. Environmental Harm (Green, 2016; Green 2018). Educational strategies will be developed to help children understand how everything in an environment is interconnected and how their actions and behaviors impact other living beings. In this way, children will develop skills to conserve and care for their environment.
Education Strategy #3: Promoting nature connectedness. Promoting children's "connectedness to nature," or positive affect towards the natural world, is important in the development of a healthy environmental identity development. Through exercising spatial autonomy, discovering their sense of place in the environment, children begin to see themselves as part of an environment, not separate from it. By spending time in an environment and connecting with it, children are more likely to act in ways to steward and care for their environment. Lessons promoting nature connectedness, emphasize both a personal and social connection with the environment and a reciprocate relationship with other living beings.
Education Strategy #4: Cultural connections to the environment and place. Modeling and teaching of emotional and behavioral responses to nature are explicitly and inexplicitly taught within the sociocultural contexts of the family, school, and community. Education Indigenous to place recognizes that traditional ways of knowing are taught through stories and by way of demonstration (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 1999). From a young age, many Alaska Native children are taught through careful observations of natural processes, which help them to develop modes for survival in their harsh environment, including obtaining sustenance from plants and animals and creating tools out of natural materials. Through lessons that emphasize traditional ecological understandings, children will develop a deeper connection to their environment and place.
