Middle years students' experiences in nature: A case study on nature-play

Access to other children and frequent visits affect children's perceptions of nature play

This study was designed to focus on the ways in which children play and experience natural environments during free-time activities and how these experiences shape their perceptions, ideas and concepts about the natural world.

A case study methodology was used to explore access to and interactions with nature among middle school students. Twenty-five (25) six and seven year old children from one classroom in a northern Adelaide, Australia school participated in the study, which was conducted in two phases. First, all of the student participants completed an activity in which they were asked to draw a place in nature that included how they used the outdoor space, who shared the experience with them, and what features, animals, people, and/or structures were in the space. All of the students also completed an open-ended questionnaire that allowed them to expand on their drawings of nature-play experiences and respond to prompts about their perceptions regarding the natural world. Seven students were involved in a focus group that included individual interviews. The student’s drawings were organized based on whether they depicted domesticated (10) or wild (15) nature settings (defined by an absence of adult influence or human structures).

Themes that emerged from the data analysis included students’ access to natural areas, students’ ideas about where nature occurs and what nature includes, as well as their attitudes towards nature and the contexts in which they experience creative nature play.

The majority of the students (21) reported that they accessed nature experiences via semi-structured family outings. This was the case for all wild nature experiences and the majority of domesticated nature experiences. Overall, the students’ drawings and questionnaire responses suggested that they did not have substantial experience with natural areas in their own local environments, or perhaps did not perceive local settings as “nature” but rather considered nature to be a destination. Students’ drawings did suggest that when most (18) of them thought about nature, their primary perception was about the greenness of the area, with plants drawn in careful detail. The majority of the students provided questionnaire and/or interview comments that linked their attitudes towards nature to the ways in which they gathered sensory information during experiences. Students’ responses also highlighted their emotional reactions to feeling close to nature, with most students “describing feelings of calm and peacefulness, feelings of freedom, or wonder, joy and excitement about the spaciousness and beauty they experienced, and their happiness from being in nature.”

The seven students that participated in the focus group provided comments suggesting an awareness and empathy towards nature such as an understanding of the challenges that the natural world is facing and the role human behavior has in those issues. The majority of students (22) did not draw, describe or discuss nature-play activities involving creativity, imagination or inventiveness. The researchers found it to be “noteworthy that fantasy play occurred only in domesticated nature settings where the student had independent access to the park frequently, and that creative and inventive play in other types of play activities occurred only in settings where students had access to other children while in nature settings.” In particular the researchers honed in on the students’ excitement about and longing for time spent outdoors with friends engaged in exciting, challenging, and appropriate risking-taking activities. The study’s mixed approach yielded rich and useful insights into children’s direct experiences of nature-play. The findings suggest that frequent exposure to natural areas coupled with the presence of other children is helpful for achieving the type of creative free-play that previous research has associated with multiple benefits.