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Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature

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 bec...

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Autores principales: Luís, Sílvia, Dias, Ronisa, Lima, Maria Luísa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7691232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33281670
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567882
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author Luís, Sílvia
Dias, Ronisa
Lima, Maria Luísa
author_facet Luís, Sílvia
Dias, Ronisa
Lima, Maria Luísa
author_sort Luís, Sílvia
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-76912322020-12-04 Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature Luís, Sílvia Dias, Ronisa Lima, Maria Luísa Front Psychol Psychology 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. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-11-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7691232/ /pubmed/33281670 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567882 Text en Copyright © 2020 Luís, Dias and Lima. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Luís, Sílvia
Dias, Ronisa
Lima, Maria Luísa
Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
title Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
title_full Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
title_fullStr Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
title_full_unstemmed Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
title_short Greener Schoolyards, Greener Futures? Greener Schoolyards Buffer Decreased Contact With Nature and Are Linked to Connectedness to Nature
title_sort greener schoolyards, greener futures? greener schoolyards buffer decreased contact with nature and are linked to connectedness to nature
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7691232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33281670
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567882
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