Hands-On Activities and Positive Emotions Foster Environmental Knowledge

Research has long supported the idea that outdoor experiences can support various environmental education (EE) outcomes, including environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Researchers and practitioners view such outcomes as important elements of environmental literacy, yet there is some contention as to whether traditional, school-based EE and informal, outdoor EE function differently when fostering those outcomes.

To address those variances, this study's authors set out to assess cognitive knowledge gains and emotional change among students who participated in a nature-based conservation program. Through hands-on engagement, the authors were interested in examining how positive emotions might influence cognitive achievement in outdoor settings. The authors hypothesized that experiential EE in outdoor settings might successfully support cognitive achievement and eventually knowledge gain, particularly with the use of experiential, engaging follow-up activities.

To focus on the impact of out-of-school, informal EE on the linkages between affect-cognition and knowledge gain, the authors studied outcomes of students' direct experiences with nature in the Bavarian Forest National Park in Germany. Using this focus, the authors targeted two primary objectives: (1) maintaining a hands-on structure for the entire intervention, including follow- up activities (designed as games and posters), and (2) measuring cognitive achievement, as well as situational emotions, to better understand affect–cognition linkages.

The national park provided weeklong experiential programming about regional geology, biology, ecology, and conservation for 298 fourth- and fifth-grade participants in the study, all of whom were from the region. The program primarily took place outdoors, with the goal of fostering positive physical and emotional connections to the landscape. Content mostly included forest ecology and conservation of the wolf and lynx— two reintroduced, endangered species. Outdoor educators worked with groups of 7 to 12 students at a time and used a variety of games and activities to teach topics such as species identification, ecological succession, and species population distribution. Nightly journaling and thematic review posters supplemented the field-based components of the program.

All students participated in the same program, but researchers split them into two groups: Group 1 (G-1; n=170), and Group 2 (G-2; n=128). The researchers also had a comparison group (n=60) of students who did not participate in the program or any intervention. The 60 students in the comparison group answered questionnaires to test cognitive achievement and situational emotions before and after the residential program. All 298 G-1 and G-2 students also responded to these questionnaires, which included 15 multiple-choice questions related to knowledge, and 9 five-point Likert questions focused on three situational emotions: well-being, interest, and boredom. Students responded to questionnaires in a pre-, post-, and retention test format. The pre-test occurred in the two weeks before the national park program (at T0); the post-test occurred on site, immediately following the completion of the program (at T1); and the retention test occurred at the students' schools four to six weeks after the program (at T2). Testing students at T0, T1, and T2 provided baseline data across all participants and allowed researchers to assess short- and long-term knowledge and emotional outcomes.

The students in G-1 and G-2 participated in two different intervention formats, in addition to responding to the three questionnaires. The 170 students in G-1 interacted with posters that depicted the most important thematic content of the program, while the 128 students in G-2 interacted with these posters and played a competitive board game based on the programmatic content, which was meant to produce emotions among participants.

Analysis of questionnaire results across the three groups using linear mixed models in R revealed that the comparison group did not demonstrate a statistically significant knowledge gain over time, while students in both G-1 and G-2 demonstrated statistically significant knowledge increases over the short-term (T1-T0) and the long-term (T2-T0). This held true when broken down into the three main themes: forest, wolf, and lynx. Furthermore, students in G-2 experienced significantly more knowledge gains than G-1 across all time scales.

With respect to situational emotions, the authors found that participants' well-being and interest had small, but statistically significant, impacts on long-term knowledge outcomes. Well-being also affected short-term knowledge gains.

This research suggests that a combination of content-based interventions (the posters) and interventions with emotional linkages (the competitive, content-based board game) may be one successful method of increased cognitive achievement, as measured through longer-term EE knowledge retention. In particular, the researchers emphasize that hands-on, affectively focused programs might engender positive emotions, which, in turn, support deeper, more lasting learning outcomes.