{"id":6626,"date":"2016-04-04T07:20:32","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T07:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6626"},"modified":"2016-04-04T07:20:32","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T07:20:32","slug":"forest-schools-and-environmental-attitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/04\/04\/forest-schools-and-environmental-attitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"Forest Schools and Environmental Attitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forest Schools and Environmental Attitudes: a case study of children aged 8\u201311\u00a0years,<\/em>\u00a0which was published last year by\u00a0Cogent Education, was\u00a0made available to celebrate International Forest Day (March 21st).<\/p>\n

This is what the paper's Abstract\u00a0says:<\/p>\n

\"There is growing evidence that children in the UK are suffering from a lack of engagement with nature and the outdoor environment. \u00a0This paper investigates the attitudes of children towards the natural environment and focuses on Forest School programmes as a mechanism to promote a \u201cpro-environmental\u201d attitude. \u00a0The study identified that there was a statistically significant difference in environmental attitude between groups of children that had participated in a Forest Schools programme and those that had not participated, with children who have taken part in Forest Schools demonstrating a more pro-environmental attitude. \u00a0Whilst it is recognised that Forest Schools may not be the only factor influencing these attitudes, this is still an important finding that adds to the overall benefits of participation in Forest Schools programmes.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The overall message here is a positive one, albeit hedged with some uncertainty about causality. \u00a0But how much confidence should we place in what is written? \u00a0Here are a few thoughts:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0<\/strong>Six primary schools took part in the research reported here. \u00a0Five were in Cumbria; one was in Glasgow. \u00a0This mix seems strange to say the least, but no explanation is offered. \u00a0Three were forest schools and three were not.\u00a0 A total of\u00a059 children in the three forest schools supplied data in the form of a questionnaire; about twice as many responded from the non-forest schools. \u00a0This was an opportunity sample (as opposed to anything more systematic), and so\u00a0it\u00a0would seem impossible to know whether\u00a0these three schools were\u00a0fully represented of the forest school experience. \u00a0The results should be read\u00a0with this in mind.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0<\/strong>The authors point out some of the problems with this research, for example, that the children involved might not have been able fully to understand the questionnaire, and yet they made no attempt to check this out beforehand, putting their trust in an instrument that had been developed for use another context. \u00a0They claim some credit for adjusting wording to make it more UK-focused, for example, changing \u201ccar pooling\u201d to \u201ccar or lift sharing\u201d, but they never bother to wonder what 8 year olds in Cumbria are likely to know about such a practice. \u00a0Although readers are not shown\u00a0what the other questions were, there has to be at least some<\/em> doubt about how appropriate the questions really were for 8 to 10 year old British children, even if they could understand them.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0<\/strong>Oddly, we are told anything\u00a0about any of the schools that took part that would allow us to form judgements about what their children experienced in relation to environmental issues. \u00a0For example, might it be that some of the non-forest schools did as much (or more) as the three forest schools did in terms of exposing children to environmental ideas and experiences? \u00a0We don\u2019t know because neither do the authors, as\u00a0they never asked. \u00a0Given that the children in one of the non-forest schools scored more highly than the children in one of the forest schools, might this be so \u2013 assuming, of course, that these differences are real and not just noise in the data (which is always possible).<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0<\/strong>Part of the paper is devoted to some forest school training that has nothing to do with the questionnaire survey, other than it involved children who went to one of the non-forest schools. Despite all the concerns about the prevalence of nature deficit disorder, etc, (which the paper emphasises), and the widespread moral panic about children never going into nature<\/em> these days, quite bizarrely, all these children,\u00a0had \u201cvisited woodlands with their families\u201d which must give pause for thought about the nature of the sample in this non-forest school.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately, the problem of the paper lies in issues of causality; that is, are the scores the children accrue due to their experiences\u00a0outwith the school (which is possible), or caused by\u00a0their school experiences (which the authors claim). \u00a0Or a bit of both? \u00a0We cannot know, but the authors prefer to assume we can. \u00a0The findings and conclusions have to be read in this light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forest Schools and Environmental Attitudes: a case study of children aged 8\u201311\u00a0years,\u00a0which was published last year by\u00a0Cogent Education, was\u00a0made available to celebrate International Forest Day (March 21st). This is what the paper's Abstract\u00a0says: \"There is growing evidence that children in...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}