The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies,

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Repairing the Relationship between Students and

Nature

Kean Roberts & Jerrid Kruse

To cite this article: Kean Roberts & Jerrid Kruse (2019): Repairing the Relationship between
Students and Nature, The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas,
DOI: 10.1080/00098655.2018.1547265

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THE CLEARING HOUSE
https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.2018.1547265

Repairing the Relationship between Students and Nature

Kean Roberts and Jerrid Kruse
School of Education, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
As people seek out more naturalistic experiences (e.g. camping, visiting National and State Nature; “real” science;
Parks, etc.), it is increasingly important for students to leave our classrooms with an under- philosophy for students;
standing of and relationship to nature. The NGSS exposes students to environmental prob- community involvement;
international education;
lems of today and works toward the EPA’s description of environmental literacy (2004). To instructional techniques
help foster this relationship for students, we have explicit discussions with students about:
(1) what nature is, (2) the benefits (e.g. justifications) for natural experiences, (3) how nature
influences humans, (4) how humans impact nature, and (5) human responsibility to conserve
and preserve nature. Through such discussions, our students begin demonstrating personal
justifications for nature as well as a deeper relationship to the natural world. Students rec-
ognize the importance of protecting the health of natural resources while taking or using
only what is necessary for their consumption, and become responsible consumers. Most
importantly, we want to prepare our students to be better natural stewards.

Introduction otherwise, the awareness and action has no

Wild animals enjoying one another and taking
pleasure in their world is so immediate and so real,
yet this reality is utterly absent from textbooks and
academic papers about animals and ecology. There is
truth revealed here, absurd in its simplicity.
David George Haskell
There’s no way around it, students today are
spending more time indoors or in organized
extracurricular activities. As science teachers, one
of our goals is to help students develop a per-
sonal connection to nature. The NGSS imbues
this relationship in their standards. For example,
HS-LS2-7 tasks students to “design, evaluate, and
refine a solution for reducing the impacts of
human activities on the environment and bio-
diversity” (NGSS Lead States 2013), to work
toward the EPA’s goal of “personal and civic
responsibility” (2004, 6). Yet, to achieve this per-
sonal and civic responsibility, students must
move beyond designing and evaluating solutions
and develop deeper relational thinking about
nature. When students have a personal and civic
responsibility towards nature, change occurs;
intrinsic value and is likely to stop. Toward these
ends, Hungerford and Volk (1990) summarize
five objectives that elicit behavioral change in
environmental education: (1) awareness, (2) sen-
sitivity, (3) attitudes, (4) skills, and (5) participa-
tion. This article provides some ideas worth
exploring with students as well as some example
strategies to develop students’ awareness, sensitiv-
ity, and attitudes toward nature so that they
might be motivated to develop skills and partici-
pate in environmental stewardship throughout
the school year and beyond.
Recognizing nature
Students often come to our classes thinking
nature can only be found in isolated locations
(e.g. State and National Parks, prairies, forests).
However, we want students to recognize nature
within their school grounds, neighborhoods, and
towns. Additionally, we want students to wrestle
with more complex issues such as, “To what
extent are humans a part of nature?”. This

CONTACT Kean Roberts kean.roberts@drake.edu School of Education, Drake University, Collier-Scripps, 2507 University Avenue, Des Moines, IA
50311-3820.
ß 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 K. ROBERTS AND J. KRUSE
broader recognition of nature is a fundamental
aspect of stewardship.
We work to use small, consistent, and place-
based lessons and investigations to encourage stu-
dents to share their knowledge of local history
and ecology, while placing them in an expert role
(Wattchow and Brown 2011) thus boosting their
locus of control. For example, during a biology
unit on the energy flow of ecosystems, one
author tasked students with an outdoor investiga-
tion where they observe a one-by-one meter sec-
tion of land. The students are focused on
building an energy diagram of their section, but
as they arrive back inside, we draw a continuum
on the board between natural and non-natural.
Then we ask, “On a scale from natural to non-
natural, where would you classify aspects of your
plot?” Students say things like, “Grass should be
more towards the natural side, but not fully nat-
ural because humans mow their lawns and take
care of it.” Others say things similar to “I had
some pavement in my section. That would be
classified as non-natural because it is man-made.”
Unsurprisingly, the students believe that humans
are separate from nature. To push them on this
idea we ask, “Where might humans be located on
our continuum?” Following a brief discussion
with the students, we use this idea as a spring-
board for the recognition of nature in human-
dominated locations. We probe the students
deeper by asking, “Even though we might see
ourselves as beyond nature, what are some
commonalities between us and other organisms?”
Justifying nature
Having students recognize nature in a broader
sense is not enough. We also want students to
recognize the value in nature so that they leave
our classrooms with a desire to make the natural
world better. Some reasons to value natural expe-
riences relate to physical and mental health. For
example, when students do not participate in
nature, they lose their connection to place and
community, and may experience attention diffi-
culties as well as higher rates of physical and
emotional illness (Louv 2005). Woods (2017) calls
these benefits spiritual justifications for nature
and adds recreational, esthetic, and scientific
justifications for the importance of nature.
To encourage students to wrestle with these
ideas, we sometimes use organized outdoor time,
such as outdoor lessons or field trips, but Louv
(2005) and Wattchow and Brown (2011) have
expressed students’ need for free time to explore
outdoor areas. Five-to-ten minutes of unorgan-
ized time prior to the lesson will see the students
posing their own questions and building a rela-
tionship and responsibility to their natural sur-
roundings. Furthermore, these firsthand, natural
experiences require students to use all of their
senses to build knowledge about content, nature,
and themselves, while facilitating social collabor-
ation and mental serenity (Moore 1997). Having
students reflect on these and personal experiences
will help the students develop a personal justifica-
tion for nature.
For example, while exploring a local sandbar,
one author gave students five unorganized
minutes to investigate their surroundings. During
this process, we notice that students move into
activities reflecting their current emotions.
Sometimes students will partake in unorganized
play or will sit quietly by a stream. Following the
five minutes, we continue with our river observa-
tions to derive a relationship between hydraulic
head and river stage. However, we make time
near the end of the lesson to ask, “How many
students have been in this river before?” We are
not surprised when few students have experi-
enced the river and ask, “We can clearly learn
science when in nature; what other benefits do
you think there are for being in nature?” Some
students claim that being in nature is “relaxing”
or a “time to remove yourself from the stresses
of schools.” Unfortunately, some students claim
they do not see benefits for nature and “don’t
want to be outside”. We hope this attitude
changes with increased exposure, but also know
that reflection is an important component to
changing such attitudes.
Regardless of their initial response, we try to
get students to think beyond their own feelings
by asking, “Why do you think people who climb
mountains might want to be in nature?” Here
students note that some people see nature as
“something to conquer” or as “a story to tell”.

We then ask, “How is this different from why an
artist might spend time in nature?” When stu-
dents note that artists are trying to capture the
beauty of nature, we try to connect their thinking
to how we conceptualize nature by asking, “Why
might people who go to nature for esthetic, recre-
ational, and spiritual reasons have different defi-
nitions of nature?” Students sometimes struggle
with this question so we encourage them to talk
to their partners or journal about the question.
When we come back together as a whole group,
students claim that going into nature for different
purposes affects the way we see nature. For
example, one student wrote “When people try to
conquer nature they might define nature as
something other than human, but someone who
uses nature for spiritual reasons will maybe see a
connection with nature.”
Examining nature’s impact on humans
Too often, discussions about nature only
emphasize how humans impact nature. However,
we want students to recognize also how nature
influences the way humans and other organisms
live. As our students continue to interact with
nature, we explore the ways nature is impacting
them as individuals as well as the neighborhood,
town, and state.
During a biology lesson on vertebrate species,
one author has their students go outside and
write in their journal about the vertebrate species
in their area. Students tend to write about birds
and deer based on their prior experiences. After a
couple minutes of journaling, the author asks the
question, “How does nature impact organisms
and drive evolution?”. Students claim “some
organisms will have more food, so they will sur-
vive easier,” or “their habitat isn’t as fragile as
others and that helps them survive and make off-
spring.” We then inquire, “How might nature
influence humans and our society?”. We allow
students time to discuss in small groups where
they often note that “bigger cities are built next
to coasts or large rivers,” “the resources next to a
town determine the jobs available,” and once a
student even asked, “I wonder if having more
natural areas near a town affects the citizens?”
THE CLEARING HOUSE 3
Examining human impact on nature
While students should recognize nature’s impact
on humans, we do want to ensure they see the
interaction as a two-way street. We want students
to recognize our coexistence with nature rather
than believing nature is something to be tamed
or conquered with technology. This colonial view
of nature reiterates an outdated ideology which
deems nature as a resource to be harvested
(Heidegger 1977). Even protected natural areas
are under threat. The visitation numbers for
National and State parks have soared over the
past years (US Department of the Interior,
National Park Service 2018); but as more tourists
explore the natural vistas, the more threats they
create through vandalism, wildlife harassment,
and illegal camping (FitzGerald 2016).
As noted previously, unorganized outdoor time
can benefit students in many ways, including
providing students with concrete observations of
human impacts on natural settings. During a
chemistry investigation, one author had students
compare the pH of rainwater to creek water one
hour after a rainstorm. One of our students lives
on a farm that has a stream running through the
property and volunteered to collect samples. As
students notice that the pH rises from 6.7 in the
rain water to 7.3 in the stream, we ask for some
ideas as to why this change occurred. The stu-
dents’ ideas include “agricultural runoff,” and
that “the plants have changed the pH of the soil.”
We then show students images of the dead zone
in the Gulf of Mexico and ask, “How do you
think the agricultural run-off of the Midwestern
states might contribute to this zone?” Students in
upper high school easily note that the chemicals
from farms make their way through the streams
and rivers all the way to the gulf. We encourage
students to think more personally by asking, “If
farms have this far-reaching impact, how do you
impact nature daily?” Students typically talk
about littering, but we push them further by ask-
ing, “How might the way you heat your home
and drive your cars influence the entire planet?”
Because students in our schools have been
introduced to global warming early in the cur-
riculum, they make connections between their
daily activities and planetary temperature.
4 K. ROBERTS AND J. KRUSE

Table 1. We highly recommend these books and websites to provide examples and ideas for teachers to expand their
thinking about environmentally responsible behaviors.
1. Berry, W. (2015). The unsettling of America: Culture & agriculture. Counterpoint.
2. Dillard, A. (1974). Pilgrim at tinker creek. New York.
3. Flores, D. (2016). Coyote America: A natural and supernatural history. Basic Books.
4. Haskell, D., G. (2012). The forest unseen: A year’s watch in nature. Penguin.
5. Leopold, A. (1989). A sand county almanac: And sketches here and there (Outdoor Essays & Reflections). Oxford University Press.
6. Mann, C. C. (2018). The wizard and the prophet: Two remarkable scientists and their dueling visions to shape tomorrow’s world. Knopf.
7. Muir, J. (2011). Wilderness essays. Gibbs Smith.
8. Williams, F. (2017). The nature fix: Why nature makes us happier, healthier, and more creative. WW Norton & Company.
9. Wohlleben, P. (2018). The weather detective: Rediscovering nature’s secret signs. Penguin.
10. Woods, M. (2017). Rethinking wilderness. Broadview Press.
11. Wulf, A. (2015). The invention of nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s new world. Knopf.
12. North American Association for Environmental Education. (2018) https://www.naaee.org
13. Louv, R. (2018). https://www.richardlouv.com/blogs/

Responsible preservation and conservation
As students begin to develop awareness of their
relationship with nature, we want to move their
thinking towards the responsibility to preserve
and conserve nature. A responsible steward of
nature seeks to preserve and conserve nature in a
way that maintains its health while only taking or
using only what is necessary (Berry 1977). The
underlying commonality between preservation
and conservation is an awareness of actions and
the corresponding tradeoffs. When a student
demonstrates environmental literacy, they will
take their own actions into account and under-
stand the corresponding trade-offs.
In an environmental science class, we had stu-
dents discuss the cost and benefits of the logging
industry. To get students to think about costs
and benefits we ask, “How does the logging
industry affect our environment?” Students often
respond with, “They cut down all the trees which
destroys habitats for animals.” Following the stu-
dent responses, we push the students thinking
deeper by questioning, “If we’re not replenishing
the resources, why might it be problematic if we
take more than we need?” The students answer
similarly to, “we will eventually run out of our
resource.” We then problematize students’ over-
simplified version of deforestation by asking,
“Given that logging companies replant trees after
they cut them down, how does that change your
thinking?” Students recognize that this is an
improvement over simply cutting down trees, but
some students still have reservations about
whether trees should be cut down at all. To fur-
ther push student thinking, we describe the pro-
cess detailed by Wohlleben (2016) in which
horses are used to avoid soil compaction and
individual trees are identified for removal and
ask, “How might this method of logging be more
environmentally friendly?” Students typically
explain that “if only certain trees are cut down
then the trees can be selected based on age, and
maybe not very many trees are taken out of a
single location.”
Conclusion
The EPA’s (2004) “personal and civic
responsibility” can be fostered in students
through meaningful and personal connections to
nature. While natural experiences are important,
we want to draw your attention to the discus-
sions we had with students. To help students
reflect on their experiences with nature, we expli-
citly asked them questions to guide their thinking
about (1) what counts as nature, (2) how we jus-
tify nature, (3) the two-way interaction of nature
and humans, and (4) the importance of conserva-
tion and preservation. Without these explicit con-
versations, students might remember natural
experiences, but not develop deeper thinking
about nature or develop a relationship with
nature and, therefore, feel no responsibility
toward nature.
Importantly, a single lesson or unit is unlikely
to help students develop deeper relational think-
ing toward nature. Instead, we have tried to high-
light key ideas that we revisit repeatedly in our
classes, but not necessarily as stand-alone lessons,
and give some examples of how we try to engage
students with these ideas. However, this is not an
exhaustive list and only an introduction to deeper
thinking about nature. For example, once they
have begun wrestling with ideas about nature, we

ask students deeper questions throughout the
year such as,
 How might capitalism (or another economic sys-
tem) impact the way we view nature in positive
and negative ways?
 How might our culture affect the way we
view nature?
 If nature is constantly changing, why might
preservation be problematic?
 How does selective anthropomorphizing (e.g.,
animals have feelings but trees do not) affect our
relationship with nature?
 How are the concepts of freedom and
nature related?
Unfortunately, we simply do not have the
space to share all of the fascinating conversations
we have had with students. The books and web-
sites in Table 1 have been extremely useful for
sparking our own thinking about nature and gen-
erating discussion prompts for our classes.
Although this article focuses primarily on
science curriculum to build a personal and civic
responsibility, we believe it is possible to promote
these ideas within other content areas. One pos-
sible difference between the science classroom
and other content areas is the justification for the
use of nature. In a science classroom the students
will be using nature for concrete experiences and
exploration, while in an English classroom the
students may be experiencing nature for inspir-
ational, esthetic, or spiritual purposes. However,
these differences present another opportunity to
engage students in thinking about nature by ask-
ing, “How do you think the way we experience
nature in science compared to English affects the
THE CLEARING HOUSE 5
way we view nature?” Whatever subject you teach,
we hope your students have the opportunity to
experience and reflect upon nature.
References
Berry, W. 1977. The unsettling of America: Culture &
agriculture. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press.
FitzGerald, E. 2016. Increase in Yellowstone visitors raises
park’s concerns over wildlife and safety. The Guardian,
August 24. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/
aug/24/yellowstone-national-park-visitors-wildlife-safety.
Haskell, D. G. 2012. The forest unseen: A year’s watch in
nature. New York, NY: Penguin.
Heidegger, M. 1977. The question concerning technology,
and other essays.
Hungerford, H. R., and T. L. Volk. 1990. Changing learner
behavior through environmental education. The Journal
of Environmental Education 21 (3):8–21.
Louv, R. 2005. Last child in the woods: Saving our children
from nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin
Books of Chapel Hill.
Mann, C. 2018. The wizard and the prophet: Two remarkable
scientists and their dueling visions to shape tomorrow’s
world. New York, NY: Penguin Random House LLC.
Moore, R. C. 1997. The need for nature: A childhood right.
Social Justice 24 (3):203–220.
NGSS Lead States. 2013. Next generation science standards:
For states, by states. https://www.nextgenscience.org/sites/
default/files/NGSS%20DCI%20Combined%2011.6.13.pdf.
US Department of the Interior, National Park Service. 2018.
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https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/02-28-2018-visitation-
certified.htm.
Wattchow, B., and M. Brown. 2011. A pedagogy of place:
Outdoor education for a changing world. Clayton, VIC:
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Wohlleben, P. 2016. The hidden life of trees: What they feel,
how they communicate: Discoveries from a secret world.
Vancouver: Greystone Books.
Woods, M. 2017. Rethinking wilderness. Peterborough, ON:
Broadview Press.