Designing green infrastructure for connecting children with nature requires an understanding of what's needed to nurture such connections

This research addressed the lack of standard criteria or guidelines to assess or categorize an environment as being more or less “nature-connecting.” Designing green infrastructure for connecting children with nature requires an understanding of what's needed to nurture such connections. To address this concern, this research sought to establish a framework to guide the assessment of where and how children experience significant nature situations (i.e., experiences which nurture the human-nature connection). Three research questions guided the study: (1) What are the qualities of significant nature situations? (2) What constitutes children's human-nature connection? (3) How do qualities of significant nature situations and children's human-nature connection (HNC) relate to each other over time?

This study consisted of two sequential phases. During the first phase, 26 practitioners in the field of connecting children to nature participated in semi-structured interviews lasting approximately 50 minutes. The interviews addressed three main areas of interest relating to the research questions: what constitutes a “connecting” nature experience for children; what are the traits of a connected child; and how do children's HNC change over time. An online survey used during the second phase tested the criteria obtained from phase 1 and examined their comprehensiveness, transferability, and practicality. The 275 respondents to this survey represented more than 200 different organizations in 22 countries involved in efforts to connect children with nature.

The professionals participating in this study identified sixteen qualities that make a nature situation significant for children's HNC. These qualities include, for example, “engagement of senses,” “mindfulness,” and “awe.” Complementary to the connecting qualities of the environment, the findings also suggest a set of constellation of abilities of the mind and body that children learn, such as “feeling comfortable in natural spaces,” “feeling attached to natural spaces,” and “being curious about nature” that form the abilities of HNC. The participants noted that the abilities shaping children's HNC are not only in relation to “nature” as an abstract concept, but to natural physical space. They also suggested a model of development for children's HNC consisting of three consecutive phases: being in nature, being with nature, and being for nature. This indicates that, before feeling concern for the environment, and before feeling responsible and motivated to act for it, children need to feel at ease and comfortable in the natural elements of the outdoors. The progression across such abilities, however, should not be considered linear, as they are embodied in specific socio-environmental contexts.

Based on the data, the researchers drew the following conclusions in relation to the research questions: (1) significant nature situations are various and with differing consequences for children's HNC; (2) children's HNC is a complex embodied ability; and (3) children's HNC progresses over time through diverse nature routines.

The data and related conclusions led to the development of the Assessment framework for Children's Human Nature Situations (ACHUNAS). ACHUNAS outlines a list of criteria of what ought to be measured for “child-nature connecting” environments. It can thus be used in assessing the existing green infrastructure, stimulating the design of nature-connecting human environments, and in developing instructional approaches in environmental education for nurturing the children's human-nature connection.