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 “Self-regulation is a foundational element for
learning in school, and kindergarten is a critical time for its
development. If a child has good self-regulation, they're able to
regulate their emotions, physical movements, and attention which in
turn helps them to stay on task, inhibit impulses, and learn without
disrupting peers,” says Andrea Faber Taylor, teaching assistant
professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at Illinois and
co-author on the Journal of Environmental Psychology study.
Taylor’s research shows kindergarteners receiving daily lessons
outdoors in school-adjacent green spaces had greater self-regulation
after the semester-long intervention period than children who only
learned outside once per week.
“There have been studies where they'll do a handful of lessons
outdoors and show that students are better off immediately after the
lesson. But not many have assessed cumulative gains over a longer
period of time,” Taylor says. “Here, we showed the higher the
frequency of visits outdoors and the more minutes they spent outside
weekly, the greater the gains.”
More than 380 kindergarteners across nine Canadian schools
participated in the study. Half of the classrooms were assigned to a
weekly outdoor lesson, while the other half received outdoor lessons
daily, even during inclement weather. The study spanned an entire
semester – either spring or fall, depending on the school.
Teachers delivered inquiry-based lessons for either 30 or 60 minutes
in green schoolyards featuring sand, grass, or mulch; young trees;
and natural play features such as stumps, sandboxes, and garden
areas.
“They're learning by exploring, basically. The teacher prompts kids
with questions about what they're finding and usually follow a
theme,” Taylor says. Importantly, all teachers were also delivering
inquiry-based lessons during indoor learning.
Taylor was primarily interested in these formal inquiry-based
sessions, but also collected data on the total number of minutes all
students spent outdoors weekly in green spaces while at school - on
walks, during recess, or exploring nearby woods. When Taylor
included the quantity of time in some of her analyses, she noted
that even students in the “once-weekly lesson” group were getting
more time in green spaces than she expected. Clearly, though, those
in the “daily outdoor lesson” group were spending significantly more
time outside.
Students were scored on two measures of self-regulation at the
beginning and again at end of the semester. Taylor noted at the end
of the semester, controlling for baseline scores, girls in the daily
lesson cohort scored higher on self-regulation metrics compared to
girls in the weekly group. She also found a positive relationship
for girls when looking at the cumulative number of minutes spent
outdoors, with more minutes per week relating to higher scores.
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Taylor says girls may be more physically active when outdoors,
whereas kindergarten boys have similar levels of activity regardless of their
environment. But she says physical activity can’t be solely responsible for the
gains in self-regulation because girls also move more on manmade playgrounds
without the same benefits.
“There's something about green spaces that provide an additional benefit beyond
just being outdoors,” Taylor says. “For boys, the benefits for self-regulation
were a little less clear, but the pattern was still in the right direction.”
Ultimately, Taylor thinks the time in green space benefits
kindergarteners by providing respite from the fatigue of constantly working to
pay attention in school.
“As adults, we don't see kindergarten as work. But these kids are constantly
negotiating peer relationships, figuring out whose space they're in and how
close is too close, how much touching is too much, all those things. Not to
mention staying on task, attending to the rules of the classroom, the physical
space, teacher instructions, and so forth,” Taylor says.
“So moving out to green spaces may provide them the opportunity to rest and
recover because it's less draining than a built environment. That comes from the
larger body of research showing that humans, including adults, rest and recover
faster in green spaces than we do in urban spaces and built environments. We're
just applying that theory to green schoolyards.”
She explains the frequency of exposure to green spaces probably matters because
the more often kids go outside, the less attentional fatigue has a chance to
build up between outings. It may also be that kids who routinely go outside at
school develop a greater comfort level with being in and navigating natural
elements. In other words, nature isn’t seen as new; kids can let their guard
down and relax.
The study’s unique long-term design provides a solid argument for schools to
invest in green schoolyards and outdoor curricula, especially for young children
in critical periods of self-regulation development. But Taylor says the results
don’t have to be applied exclusively to school-based learning, especially now.
“Parents could be doing these things at home; certainly the positive outcomes
are not limited to a school setting. And for classes that are meeting
face-to-face, it’s much easier to be widely spaced in an outdoor setting.”
The article, “Self-regulation gains in kindergarten related to frequency of
green schoolyard use,” is published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology [DOI:
10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101440]. Authors include Andrea Faber Taylor and Carrie
Butts-Wilmsmeyer. This work was funded by the TD Friends of the Environment
Foundation, Toronto, ON.
The Department of Crop Sciences is in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and
Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.
[Source: Andrea Faber Taylor
News writer: Lauren Quinn] |
