This study primarily focuses on children’s perceptions of the natural environment during a nature camp in Antwerp. The secondary focus concerns the children’s connection to this environment. A theoretical framework of six concepts, based on existing literature in this area was employed as an orientation throughout the research: a) the physical environment; b) actions and experiences; c) the affective dimension; d) the social aspect; e) the human-nature relationship; and f) conceptualization of nature. A dual-method qualitative approach was applied, combining children’s drawings of the natural environment at the camp setting with interviews. Through an abductive process of codebook thematic analysis, two main themes were identified. The first theme was named ‘doing’ i.e. play and the second theme was named ‘being’ i.e. immersion. The first theme indicates that the children perceive the natural environment mainly through doing, specifically as a space to play. Additionally, the second theme suggests that the children perceive the natural environment through being, that is by immersion. Yet, there is no distinct line between these two themes as play is children’s natural way of being. Ultimately, these themes are two sides of one narrative in which ‘doing/being’ is intrinsically entwined in a process of relational interaction and immersion in and with the natural environment.

In recent years, there has been converging evidence on the relation between nature experiences and learning. Although outdoor experiences are not just seen as leisurely activities anymore, barriers, such as lack of resources or travel time can hinder the propagation of more outdoor educational programs. This study explores a relatively new outdoor educational setting that can help overcome these difficulties by decreasing the amount of resources, input and energy necessary to set up such measures: the educational forest garden. With lower maintenance in creating an environment that resembles an authentic ecosystem, the question remains if forest gardening can foster similar learning outcomes than those reported in other educational settings. A qualitative study in a Swedish mini-forest garden was employed to explore what types of learning are possible in this new type of setting. Interviews with two educators and eight children were conducted to find out what perceptions and experiences they communicate after spending time in the mini-forest garden. The educator’s ideas were compared with children’s accounts and observational notes on their behavior to see if there was a difference in perception and experience. Examples for learning were found in three different dimensions: cognitive, emotional and social. The explored categories were ecological literacy, language learning, attention; being comfortable outdoors, respect and care, awareness of surroundings, co-creation, teacher-student interaction, gender differences and free play and imagination. The findings indicate an overlap between teacher’s and children’s experiences and perceptions in almost all categories and similar beneficial learning outcomes with forest gardening to other outdoor educational endeavors. Along with the potential for self-development, forest gardening may be a new way to successfully teach in the outdoors with less input or resources. Although a small scale study that should not be generalized, the study gives insight to educators’ and children’s voices in a new outdoor educational setting and can help overcome the lack of children’s voices in research in general. At the same time, it adds to the limited amount of research on forest gardening and potentially helps to increase the popularity of forest gardening as a new outdoor educational method.

The dissertation investigates how non-profit organisations (NPOs) can function more efficiently by sharing resources and services. The design responds with the strategy of service integration, by transforming the facilities of POPUP, a single NPO, into a shared services hub for multiple NPOs. POPUP is a People Upliftment Programme in Salvokop, Pretoria, and serves the under-privileged communities of Pretoria with skills development courses. The dissertation aims to create restorative environments for these students and explores the theoretical approaches of regenerative design, biophilic design and restorative environmental design. The premise of the investigation is that humanity has an inherent inclination towards nature and that a healthy human-nature connection enables the healing process. Furthermore, the dissertation follows a contextual approach that responds to the railway heritage significance of Salvokop, the urban condition of disconnection from the Central Business District, as well as the self-restoration of the natural landscape. The study seeks to regenerate the human-nature connection, a manifestation of the connection between the current natural landscape and the urban condition. In this way, restorative environments are created that contribute to the regeneration of people. / Dissertation MArch(Prof)--University of Pretoria, 2014 / Architecture / MArch(Prof) / Unrestricted

Fostering human-nature connection (HNC) relates to the inner worlds of humans as a realm of influence for sustainability and is considered a deep leverage point for system transformation. Both direct nature experiences and states of mindfulness are significant for influencing the development of HNC. Therefore, in this thesis, I explore the potential of guided forest bathing – an originally Japanese practice of mindfully immersing one’s senses in the atmosphere of a forest – as an intervention for HNC. I do so by applying a mixed-methods approach and a relational, multidimensional assessment of the qualities and effects of a guided forest bathing session, as conducted in the methodology of the Scandinavian Nature and Forest Therapy Institute. While not able to establish causality, the study results suggest that participation in just one guided forest bathing session may positively influence the development of HNC, primarily in participants new to the experience. The results also suggest that several qualities of guided forest bating are important for influencing HNC, including mindfulness, engagement of senses, and self-restoration. These qualities and others related to the specific structure and social setting of the experience can provoke thoughts that meaningfully shift how individuals perceive and interact with nature. This leads the thesis to conclude that guided forest bathing represents a novel nature experience with promising potential as an intervention for HNC.

As environmental challenges are increasing in the current era of the Anthropocene, there is a growing need to understand what would instigate pro-environmental behaviour. One such factor that research has suggested is to (re)connect people with nature. This research aims to find out whether school pedagogy can have a role in this by investigating the relation between pupils’ human–nature connection (HNC) and the pedagogy of the school they attend. In order to do this, the study uses ACHUNAS, a recently developed framework to assess where and how children connect to nature. Two types of school took part in the research: one conventional school and two alternative schools, all rural schools. Based on semi-structured interviews and participant observations, the study found that there is indeed a relation between the pedagogical approach of the school and the HNC of the pupils. Alternative schools offered more recurring and more versatile nature experiences than the conventional school, and pupils in alternative schools had developed more abilities of HNC than their peers in conventional schools. Pupils in alternative schools stated that the school had changed their HNC, while in the conventional school half of the pupils stated that the school had made no impact on their HNC. On top of the findings related to the relation between school pedagogy and HNC, the study found two aspects of HNC that could be included in the ACHUNAS framework. / Tendo em vista que os desafios ambientais estão se tornando mais comuns no atual Antropoceno, há uma necessidade crescente de se entender os fatores que favorecem um comportamento sustentável. Um fator sugerido por várias pesquisas é a (re)conexão com a natureza. Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo descobrir se a pedagogia escolar possui um papel neste processo, ao investigar a relação entre a conexão com a natureza de estudantes e a abordagem pedagógica utilizada pela escola em que frequentam. Para isto, esta pesquisa empregou o método “ACHUNAS”, desenvolvido recentemente para avaliar onde e como as crianças desenvolvem uma conexão com a natureza. Três escolas do campo participaram desta pesquisa: uma escola convencional e duas escolas alternativas. Utilizando os métodos de entrevistas semiestruturadas e observações participativas, esta pesquisa descobriu que há uma relação entre a abordagem pedagógica da escola e a conexão com a natureza dos seus estudantes. As escolas alternativas ofereceram experiências na natureza com maior frequência e variação comparadas à escola convencional. Os estudantes das escolas alternativas mostraram maiores habilidades de conexão com a natureza do que os estudantes da escola convencional. Os estudantes das escolas alternativas afirmaram que a escola mudou a conexão deles com a natureza, enquanto que a metade dos estudantes na escola convencional disseram que a escola não teve um impacto na conexão deles com a natureza. Além dos resultados relacionados à relação entre a pedagogia e a conexão com a natureza, esta pesquisa descobriu dois aspetos da conexão com a natureza que poderiam ser incluídos no ACHUNAS. / Concepções, práticas e conexão de professores e estudantes com a natureza em escolas rurais no norte de Mato Grosso

This thesis aims to understand the role of facilitated nature experiences for leadersas a step towards sustainability. Qualitative interviews were conducted with facilitators andparticipants of nature-based leadership programs (NBLP) and analyzed regarding 1) Transformative Learning Conditions, 2) Transformative Learning Outcomes, and 3) Professional Changes inspired by NBLP participation. Results show that facilitators foster Transformative Learning through six main conditions and that Transformative Learning ishappening as participants experience an increased understanding of interrelatedness within our socio-ecological system, change in worldviews, as well as realignment with purpose and gained confidence. Our findings indicate some evidence of professional changes after programcompletion that show potential to move society towards sustainability. The reconstruction of worldviews and increased human-nature connectedness depicts the potential for NBLP to address a deep leverage point that is highly effective for systemic change towards sustainability. Our research provides valuable insights for practitioners in the fields of education for sustainable development and sustainability leadership to increase both conscious and subconscious ecological systems understanding. The authors suggest NBLP should be further explored by decision-makers and researchers.

Up to now, politics and societies from all over the world have sought an economy that is built on the idea of continual growth to establish a wealthy future and achieve societal prosperity. At the same time, people have neglected to consider that the resulting environmental pollution is the largest cause of disease and death in the world today. Therefore, it appears sensible to ensure that people’s well-being and nature’s well-being is uncoupled from profit-orientated aims. To break the circle of continual growth and the decreasing well-being of humans and nature, individual sustainability traits that are able to foster a transition to sustainable development need to be explicitly identified. Today’s young people will presumably face an even more severe level of consequences resulting from continual growth, which will reach far into the future, thereby affecting the living environment of future generations even more drastically. Therefore, this dissertation aims to answer the question of how young people possess and profit from their sustainability traits in terms of well-being. This work approaches this question by empirically investigating different interrelations between environmental values, the perception of environments (including the perception of naturalness and the perception of aesthetics), environmental concern and well-being in the context of young people. The empirical section is divided into three parts that investigate the different relationships step by step. These three parts are based on three different quantitative questionnaire surveys of young people in Germany. In the first survey (N = 229; Mage = 13.27 years, SD = 2.37 years), the relation between secondary school students’ human-nature relationship as a sustainability trait and their well-being was investigated. Analyses showed that the sustainability trait of human-nature relationships was significantly related to young people’s age-dependent well-being through nature perception in terms of naturalness and aesthetics as well as through individual nature connection. Young people were shown to profit from nature as resource for their own well-being. A positive human-nature relationship could be described as an important requirement for people to achieve sustainable development. In a second inquiry, university students (N = 237; Mage = 22.12 years, SD = 3.09 years) with a focus on the interrelations of sustainability traits that showed relations to people’s well-being in past research were surveyed. The results describe the interrelations between the specified sustainability traits of environmental values, a newly developed scale that theoretically and empirically validated affective nature connection, cognitive nature connection, and environmental concern. The findings indicate that the chosen sustainability traits mutually contribute to each other’s impact and do not preclude each other. Future research based on the results of the two described studies will likely show that sustainability traits are desirable characteristics and useful attributes that are available all over the world, no matter what a person’s age. As a final step, secondary school students’ environmental concern and well-being were quantitatively surveyed (N = 2173; Mage = 14.56 years, SD = 1.45 years) to analyze how environmental concern as a sustainability trait predicts young people’s well-being. The children’s and adolescents’ sustainability trait of environmental concern was able to predict young people’s well-being, with a clear dependence on age. The obtained outcomes supporting the aim to possess nature as a resource of well-being need to be considered in terms of young people’s age. Youth seem to experience sensitive periods of time in which the youth’s sustainability traits evidently act differently than in other stages of life. Hence it is important to point out that especially young people need age-appropriate treatment in terms of education for sustainable development to successfully foster young people’s sustainability traits. The main goal of this dissertation was to explore and identify in-depth insights into young people’s sustainability traits and their interrelations as well as the connections to young people’s well-being. As such interrelations between sustainability traits and well-being meet the aims of sustainable development as well as political and societal aims for a healthy future life environment for everyone which is expected of continual (economic) growth up to the present time, age-dependent education for sustainable development could address the need for young people to become progressive decision makers who create future-proof solutions for themselves and others, considering the constitution of a worthy life for present and future generations.

This thesis is an exploratory look into the use of mindfulness practice on in-depth nature experiences to determine if the practice has benefit to the participant, their outdoor experience, and overall connectedness with nature. An original research project examined three groups of adolescents from St. Michaels University School Outdoor Education program in Victoria, BC, Canada, as they hiked the Juan de Fuca trail. Two of the three groups undertook a simple mindfulness protocol to explore the outcomes. Based on participant-observation and interviews, mindfulness practice was determined to be a useful practice towards alleviating stress and anxiety associated with aspects of in-depth outdoor experiences, such as morning preparations. Participants who practiced mindfulness on the trip asked fewer questions about the future and remained present more often than those who did not practice mindfulness. A further finding was that there are aspects of mindfulness inherent in in-depth nature experiences, such as sitting around a fire. These inherent mindfulness moments should be encouraged as they provide benefit to trip experiences, and potentially towards greater connectedness with nature. Overall, this qualitative study suggests that mindfulness is a useful tool for the benefit of human well-being and nature connection. However, more research is needed to further identify the magnitude and mechanisms of the benefit. / Graduate