Tanya Uhnger Wünsche - doktorsavhandling

Beskrivning

The world is facing overwhelming environmental challenges, not least biodiversity loss and climate change. To meet these challenges, our society will need to harness technological, infrastructural, and human behavioral change to secure a sustainable future. In addition to our environmental concerns, changes in society have contributed to a situation where children are less physically active and spend less time outdoors (see Larson et al. 2018). This reduction in outdoor and active childhood experience has created concern for child development (cognitive, affective, and physical) and a loss of opportunity to develop a relationship with the natural world. This doctoral research plan application presents the role of the public afterschool youth programming (fritidshem) as a critical link supporting connectedness to nature, natural science understanding, and responsible environmental behavior. We hypothesize that public afterschool youth programming has a role in facilitating a positive sense of belonging in the natural world while deepening children’s understanding of natural systems and processes. Further, we hypothesize that this sense of belonging and deeper natural science understanding may contribute to environmentally responsible behavior. Specifically, this project will investigate various aspects of this potential captured in the following research questions:
• RQ1: How does afterschool youth programming use outdoor sites as pedagogical settings?
• RQ2: How are afterschool youth programs using proximate nature as outdoor classrooms and play sites?
• RQ3: How can afterschool youth programming contribute to the development of childhood connectedness to nature?
• RQ4: How can afterschool youth programming support the development of outdoor ethics and responsible environmental behavior?
• RQ5: How can afterschool youth programming support children’s learning about natural systems and processes?

Period	2021-sep.-01 → 2026