Do we have to go outside?

1. global educators for contemporary learning communities Do we have to go outside? Janice Jones, lecturer in Arts Education, Coordinator, B.Ed Primary Program Millenial Pre-service Teachers Discovering Nature, Creativity, and Self-Confidence

2. The Environmental Context

3. Trees enhance and soften lines, reduce noise and air pollution, provide shade and natural colour

4. “Clicks and Mortar”: 21st Century Life • Increasingly urban and technology-mediated (Cambridge, 2007; Kellert, 2002). • Yet formal education is still ‘classroom’ based. • The “bubble-wrap” generation: safety concerns (Malone, 2007) and legal constraints upon children’s adventurous play (Meier, 2006) • The loss of wild/neglected lands (Louv, 2010)

5. The 21st Century University Environment

6. “SCHOME”: Connected and Lifelong • A 'knowledge economy' moves education to the heart of the system... part of the fabric of economic and social progress” (Kalantzis & Cope, 2008, p. 7) • Changes in education are vital to humanity’s and the planet’s survival, UNESCO Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005)

7. Mediated Experience Do our undergraduate programs offer opportunities for future educators to know and understand natural environments and indigenous perspectives? Is ‘mediated’ experience enough?

8. Newly qualified teachers are predominantly millennials who have grown up with computers, mobile phones and networked communities. So why are they leaving education?

9. Teacher Attrition and Stress Factors • National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (2003): 2 million new teachers needed within a decade: 22% of new teachers leave within first 3 years. • Australia - 30% of beginning teachers leave or intend to leave within the first 5 years of practice (McCallum & Carter, 2008; Noble, 2006, 2008; O’Brien, O’Keeffe & Goddard, 2007)

10. Stress and Adaptation • Primary teachers in particular face demands that may overwhelm personal resources: long hours with the same group • Imbalance in person/environment relationships requires coping strategies (Gulwadi 2006, p.503) • Coping + adaptation (regulate emotion) = restorative outcome

11. Restorative Environments • Where do (teachers) take their problems? What are their favourite restorative places....(Korpela et al., 2001) • 1) Natural settings • 2) Home environments • 3) Third places: church, cafe, internet? • Biophilia/Topophilia – A human need for nature

12. And Beyond Restoration? • Contact with plants, pets, parks to ‘let life back in’ (Wood, 2007) • Can immersion in natural contexts enhance pre-service teacher confidence, creativity and understanding of the natural world, its centrality to indigenous perspectives, and its importance for sustainability?

13. The Plan - A Five Year Study • Method: Online surveys, interviews • Population: B.Ed (primary) students • Surveys: Start of semester (year 1 – 4) • Interviews: End of semester (year 1 – 4) • Cohort 1: 2010 (560 students) • Cohort 2: 2011 (560 students approx) • Students – Web, and on 3 campuses.

14. The Study Population • Cohort of 560 students commencing 2010 include web mode • Toowoomba (regional) • Fraser Coast (rural/maritime) • Springfield (cosmopolitan) • Mix of male and female • Majority female/under 20 years

15. The Study Cohort • All students experience a program focus on creativity sustainability and indigenous perspectives. • Toowoomba on-campus group experience selected learning opportunities in groomed and wild natural environments: 6 hours over 3 weeks (drama, dance, media, visual arts in a garden)

16. Responses: Full Cohort • 120/560 students responded to an online survey at start of semester • How important is creativity for teachers? (a similar response pattern appeared for ‘creativity for 21st century life) • How creative do you consider yourself?

19. Immersion: A Controlled “Outdoors”

20. The Natural Immersion Group Total 140 survey responses, those of 56 natural environment immersion participants (Fig. 1) indicated that engagement in natural environments impacted positively upon self- perceptions of creativity and wellbeing. • 56 students from the nature immersion group responded to a post survey. They indicated that: • Engagement in natural environments impacted positively upon self- perceptions of creativity and wellbeing. • A small number of students reported a dislike of being outdoors.

22. Comments: Immersion surveys • I have found a completely new thought pattern grow towards my own attitude and approach to teaching based on the open acceptance of thinking 'creatively' and outside the box. • I didn't realise I was as creative as I am. • ...realising that there are different views of creativity and that I am actually quite creative!!

23. End of Year Interviews • 5/56 students responded to an invitation to interview. • 2 reported that they had had no experience of creative learning in natural environments since primary school • 3 described feeling a disconnect between ‘self’ and ‘body’ as a result of sustained computer use: “I feel locked in my head”

24. Restoring the Disconnect • Where lifelong learning is predominantly experienced indoors or is technology-mediated, a teacher education that includes meaningful immersion in nature may go some way to restoring the disconnect described by Louv as “Nature Deficit Disorder” (2010).

25. A Change of Approach • Focus on Creativity, Wellbeing, Indigenous Perspectives • Challenge of ‘oversurveyed’ population in current research intensive climate • Day and overnight nature immersion experiences and visits to indigenous sites with elders’ support. • Virtual ‘natural’ world for ‘WEB’ Students: Second Life

26. Critical Review of Method... • Positive Result : Hawthorne effect? • Space: student and teacher not confined to ‘places’ of power – so perception of freedom • Place: unfamiliar therefore not ‘owned’ as restorative • Change to qualitative approach: journalling for deeper data • Introduce initial psych profiling for creativity and sense of wellbeing • Focus on relational aspects of experience

27. Less ‘snapshot’ more ‘story’ • Longer and repeated experience in provided and self-chosen natural environments (Gulwadi, 2006, Kaplan 2009) • Journalling: video, creative, print or online, images to portray ‘feelings’. • Critical reflection on human and natural, restorative and non-restorative

28. References Adair, J.G. (1984). The Hawthorne effect: A Reconsideration of methodological artifact. Journal of Applied Psychology, 69(2), 334 – 345. Cambridge, D. (2007). Two Faces of Integrative Learning. Second and Third Cohort Meeting Retrieved March 30, 2008, from http://ncepr.org/ncepr/drupal/trackback/92 K ellert, S. (2002). Experiencing Nature: Affective, Cognitive, and Evaluative Development in Children. In Kaplan R. (2001) The Nature of the View from Home: Psychological Benefits: Environment and Behaviour. (pp.507 – 542) Kellert (Eds.), Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations (pp. 117 - 151). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Louv, R. (2010, 15 May). Nature-Deficit Disorder and Solastalgia Down Under. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/people-in-nature/201004/nature-deficit-disorder-and-solastalgia-down-under Maller, C.et al. (2008). Healthy parks, healthy people: The health benefits of contact with nature in a park context: A review of relevant literature. Paper presented at the Healthy Parks, Healthy People Conference, Melbourne. Meier, D. (2000). What Do Kids Need? Eye on Education Retrieved 5 May, 2006, from http://www.eyeoneducation.tv/reform/meier.html