Masters Degrees (The Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST))

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Browsing Masters Degrees (The Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST)) by Subject "Environmental education -- Durban North (South Africa)"

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    Facilitating the development of nature connectedness
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Geytenbeek, Michaela; Feront, Cecile; Hamann, Maike; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. Centre for Sustainability Transition.
    ENGLISH SUMMARY: Amidst mounting environmental crises, there is pressing need to understand how pro-environmental behaviour develops and transforms into action. Yet, there is confusion as to how to encourage a sense of connection with nature, a concept often referred to as nature connectedness. Drawing on existing research on nature connectedness and exploring what we know about how to encourage its development, my research aims to gain an understanding of nature connectedness as a process, in order to better understand how to facilitate its development with children. More specifically, this entails gaining an understanding of how the relationship between children and nature develops, which experiences promote its development, and what role(s) the nature experience facilitator can play to encourage this connection to develop. My investigation is designed as a qualitative inquiry, combining participatory action research and grounded theory methodologies to gather and analyse data. Adopting a relational paradigm, I engage for a period of six months with a group of 36 children, their parents, and five nature experience facilitators at the Kinship Programme in Durban North, South Africa. I identify five phases of nature connectedness – afraid, comfortable, engaged, caring(self) and caring(activist) – that children experience as they progress on their journey to a deeper sense of connection to nature. My study further identifies which phase-specific experiences encouraged children to progress on their journey of nature connectedness. Finally, my study reveals that children required different support from the nature experience facilitator depending on their phase of nature connectedness and so I identify the different roles that the nature experience facilitator plays – protector, initiator, observer and navigator - in alignment with the child‟s position on their nature connectedness journey. My study makes several contributions to our understanding of how to facilitate the development of nature connectedness. Firstly, focusing on nature connectedness as a process, it complements existing frameworks of nature connectedness and offers a dynamic view of how children move from one phase to another; secondly, it highlights the importance of designing phase-specific experiences to support each child‟s progress in their journey of nature connectedness; and thirdly, it reconciles prior literature by defining the different phase- and transition-specific roles of the nature experience facilitator. My findings provide guidance that can be practically applied in the daily facilitation of nature experiences, in the design of environmental education curricula, and in informing education policy. My findings show that it is possible to intentionally design experiences that promote the development of nature connectedness, and provide phase-based guidelines to facilitators on how to do so.