A day at the zoo - not a favourite place of mine. I went for a Joint School Grounds & Natural Environment Sectors LOtC Partnership meeting and the main animals I saw were human (mostly young), flamingoes and moorhens. The last of these had broken in for a day's free-loading.
The meeting's main focus was a presentation by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) about an HSBC-funded enquiry into children's experiences at three WWT centres as part of school visits.
Although the session was titled:
'Measuring the long-term impact on pupils' attitudes and behaviour towards the environment following a visit to a WWT Wetland Centre'
... the power point presentation said it was about the impacts that visits to wetland centres have on children's 'attitude to nature'. But it wasn't really about attitude (or nature), as no validated attitudinal scales were used in the enquiry.
There were child questionnaire surveys before, after, and long after the event, and focus groups. 500 children from 19 schools were involved. Most children said they'd had a good time. Schools were chosen, and children's data compared, on the basis of high / low free school meal (FSM) uptake and this was expected to do all the heavy lifting as far as data analysis was concerned. The ideal, of course, was that those children from high FSM uptake schools had their attitudes (or whatever) improved by the experience, and that these remained elevated. The validity of this depends on those parents poor enough to get FSM having no interest in wildlife / nature / etc, and on richer ones having that interest. Just how valid that is, escapes me, but I'll ask. Well, in the end, whatever was being measured, this didn't happen. The researchers had also hoped to compare data on the basis of ethnicity but too many children has declined to say which category they fell into for that to be possible. Good for them, say I. I rather hope that some might have refused to tick the (inevitably binary) gender box as well. This was something you were made to do if you wanted to use the zoo's 'free' WiFi.
It was, of course, all very "interesting", but I've no idea what anyone learned from these visits – or from the questionnaire enquiry. One of the questions asked something about looking after / taking care of "the places where wildlife lives". The implication of this phraseology is that you have to make a special trip to these places – a visit to a WWT centre, for example. But what about the wildlife (literally and metaphorically) on your doorstep? Doesn't that need watching out for as well? Of course, if you run wildlife centres, zoos, petting farms, etc, it's not really in your interests to stress the local.
I said (above) that I'd no idea what anyone learned from these visits, but that's not quite the case. We were told, for example, that one activity involved stroking the feathers on a swan, and so it seems reasonable to conclude that a learning outcome was that it's ok to touch a swan. Well, best not to try that anywhere near where I live or you'll be in for a big surprise. And this raises the issue of just how wild the wildlife was that was encountered in these experiences? But we ran out of time to discuss such issues – actually, the two WWT presenters ran out of time talking about it. Next time, maybe ...
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