A carregar...
Publicação
Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
| Nome: | Descrição: | Tamanho: | Formato: | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 758.74 KB | Adobe PDF |
Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
Children are spending less time in nature. They are not taking advantage of the benefits
that are related to experiencing nature, such as the improvement of attentional capacity
and stress reduction. Furthermore, they are also losing the opportunity to assess nature
in a more positive way and to become more connected to nature, factors that appear to
be fundamental to securing a greener future. To overcome this problem, researchers
have been focusing on increasing children’s contact with nature in schools and in
promoting garden-based learning programs. Children spend most of their time in school,
where they face many cognitive and relational demands. As such, schools might be the
ideal context to increase children’s contact with nature with more empirical research
being needed to understand the effects that greener schools might have. The goal of
this study is to explore the effects of schoolyards in children’s perceived restorativeness
experiences, attitudes towards nature, connection to nature, and social competences.
For that, we studied children (N = 132) from three elementary schools with different
schoolyards: a school with cement yard with a few trees, a school with green areas,
and a school where many parts of the yard were earthen and there was a vegetable
garden that the students could cultivate as part of an ongoing garden-based learning
program. The results of a questionnaire confirmed that greener schoolyards were related
to stronger restorative experiences. As such, children might benefit from improving their
attentional capacity during breaks. Unexpectedly, the perceived restorativeness effect
was stronger for children who usually had lesser contact with nature than for children
who contacted more with nature. This suggests that having schools with green yards
might buffer some of the effects of reduced contacts with nature outside of school. The
effects of the schoolyard in children’s social competences did not appear to emerge.
However, children that attended the school with the greener schoolyard had more
positive attitudes and were more connected to nature than children from the other
two schools. This further suggests that designing greener schoolyards might be an
opportunity to contribute to reversing global environmental challenges.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
schoolyard, contact with nature, attitudes towards nature, social competences, connectedness to nature, perceived restorativeness
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Luís S, Dias R and Lima ML (2020) Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature. Front. Psychol. 11:567882. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567882