Introduction
Thea Weiss, Peter Kahn Jr. and Ling-Wai Lam recently published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology (2022) exploring the importance of wild spaces in designing nature preschools. Their main finding provides a powerful argument for designing forest preschools with wilder spaces to promote a relational ways of being in nature.
Ways on Being in Nature
Research shows that interaction with nature is important for mental and physical health. This is good news, except that children spend less time outdoors than in the past. When children do spent time outside, the nature they access is usually domesticated – less biologically diverse, smaller in scale and diminished in terms of affordances for play (Weiss et al., 2022). Nature preschools and forest kindergartens are one way to combat the trend, having children spend their school days in outside classrooms with curriculum connected to nature.
There are two orientations to time outdoors: relational ways of being (what the study calls interaction patterns) that show a bond with nature, including the ability to cohabitate with other life forms, and to promote the well-being of nature. Or domination ways of being that involve people dominating nature.
Background of the Study
Weiss, Kahn Jr. and Lam set out to model child-nature interactions in two outdoor classrooms at Fiddleheads Forest Preschool in Seattle, WA. Forty-nine children ages 3-5 years participated in the study. Five nature zones of similar size were identified, and video of children in the zones were recorded over 35 weeks (using a random time sampling methodology). The video recordings were then coded and analyzed for ways of being.
Interactions that Foster Relational Ways of Being
Eight interaction patterns were identified with relational ways of being:
- Being in solitude in nature, actively
- Being in solitude in nature, passively
- Calling birds
- Cohabiting with a wild animal
- Imitating animals
- Leaning against a tree
- Looking at wild animals
- Lying on earth
The eight interaction patterns were noted 196 times in the video data. The researchers then established their frequency distribution by landscape.
They discovered a reverse trend! In areas with greater wildness, there was a larger proportion of relational interaction patterns; “most non-relational interaction patterns occurred in relatively domestic areas of the classroom, and least often in the areas of the outdoor classroom characterized by greater relative wildness” (Weiss et al., 2022, p.6).
Conclusion
For many of us, domestic nature is more prevalent than wild nature; domestic nature continues to diminish, be polluted or impoverished. This research provides a powerful argument for more wild forms of nature for children to interact with.
Designing forest kindergartens and nature preschools with wild spaces is important to support healthier, emotionally strong and resilient children, and foster relational ways of being that will promote future advocacy.
Additional reading on this topic from a trusted source:
The Children & Nature Network (US-based).
