Sagehen Creek Field Station

14 Sep, 02 AM - 09 Oct, 08 AM

A call has gone out in the past decade to critically examine the degree to which children interact with the natural world. Motivations for this renewed focus stem from multiple theoretical and epistemological positions, including, among others, a concern that children?s psychological and physical well-being is tied up in having direct contact with natural environments; the investigation of the link between childhood experiences with nature and the development of an ecocentric framework in adulthood; and the potential for leveraging of children?s interests in nature as a catalyst for learning science.Though these areas of inquiry span multiple disciplines, a common premise unites them: children?s interactions with nature have significantly changed in the past century. And while the variables of context, culture, and experience have been fruitfully taken up in the cognitive developmental literature on children?s biological knowledge (e.g., Inagaki & Hatano, 2002; Waxman & Medin, 2007), little work that considers the role of these influential factors on children?s mental models of nature has been undertaken to date (see Bang, Medin & Atran, 2007, for an exception). Therefore, I see the following questions framing my dissertation: 1) What types of experiences with the natural world do children have? (incl. when, where, with whom, how often, etc.) 2) What are their mental models of 'nature'? 3) How do their experiences mediate their mental models?

Visit #19160 @Sagehen Creek Field Station

Approved

Under Project # 20509 | Research

Children's Everyday Experiences with the Natural World

graduate_student - University of California, Berkeley

Reservation Members(s)

Nicole Migliarese Sep 14 - Oct 9, 2009 (26 days)

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Camping/Upper camp 1 Sep 14 - Oct 9, 2009