Youth-to-educator learning creates mutual benefits in environmental education programs

The study examined a residential outdoor school program for fifth graders run by Shaver's Creek Environmental Center, an extension of a large research university in the mid-Atlantic region. The program consisted of a four-day, three-night experience that serves fifth graders from surrounding rural school districts, many of which have high percentages of economically disadvantaged students. The environmental educators consisted of three types: first-time counselors, returning counselors, and lead educators, most of whom were university students taking a course on environmental and outdoor education.

Using sociocultural learning theory as a framework, which recognizes how learning is shaped by place, people, and tools within social interactions, the researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 27 educators after their teaching experiences. Through inductive analysis of the interview transcripts, they identified ten themes representing different types of learning that educators gained from their interactions with youth:

1. Teacher/Leadership Skills: Educators reported learning classroom management techniques, patience, empathy, adaptability, and how to engage with different learning styles. Many noted that actual experience with youth helped them refine teaching skills that couldn't be developed through coursework alone.
    
2. Sociocultural Knowledge: Educators gained understanding about different cultural contexts, socioeconomic realities, regional differences, and youth perspectives and interests. For example, educators learned about local flora and fauna from rural students who had different knowledge than urban or suburban educators.
    
3. Mental Health Benefits: Interactions with youth helped educators reduce stress, relax, have fun, and adopt more carefree attitudes. Several noted that children's ability to "move on from emotions quickly" helped educators gain perspective on their own stress.
    
4. Return to Childlikeness: Many educators described rediscovering a sense of wonder, curiosity, and playfulness through their interactions with youth. One educator noted how a child described pine needles as "nature's eyelashes," prompting the realization that they "hadn't thought about nature that way in years."
    
5. Social-Emotional Learning: Educators developed interpersonal skills, emotional awareness, and relationship-building abilities. They observed how children interact with each other and learned different approaches to conflict resolution.
    
6. Meaningfulness of Work: The program fostered a sense of purpose and impact, with educators reporting "warm fuzzies" and feelings of fulfillment from seeing the positive influence they had on children.
    

7. Informing Life Decisions: Several educators reported that the experience helped them make important decisions about their career paths, educational focus, or whether they wanted to have children of their own.

    

8. Little to No Expectations: Interestingly, many educators entered the program with little expectation that they would learn from the youth, showing an initial bias against viewing children as potential knowledge-holders.
    
9. Feelings of Appreciation: After the program, educators reported greater appreciation for nature, their own families, and "the little things in life."
    
10. Connection to Nature: Educators developed deeper connections to the natural world by observing how children interact with and care for nature.

The findings revealed that different types of educators tended to emphasize different aspects of learning. First-time counselors most frequently reported increasing their sociocultural knowledge, returning counselors emphasized experiencing a return to childlikeness, and lead educators reported improvements in teaching/leadership skills and social-emotional learning. However, all educator groups consistently reported that youth (the campers) had the largest influence on their overall experience, even when they had initially expected to learn more from their peers or mentors.

For environmental education practitioners, this study offers several important implications:

1. Programs should recognize the bidirectional nature of learning between youth and educators, and explicitly value children's expertise and perspectives.
    
2. Novice environmental educators benefit in multiple ways from teaching experiences with youth, beyond just improving their teaching skills. These additional benefits may help sustain educators in their careers and prevent burnout.
    
3. Educators should be open to learning from youth and avoid assuming that knowledge only flows from adults to children.
    
4. The research suggests that YEIGL indirectly benefits youth themselves, as educators who learn from children become more effective teachers, developing improved teaching approaches, better cultural understanding, and stronger social-emotional competencies.
    
5. Programs should create space for educators to reflect on what they are learning from their students, as many participants only recognized these learnings through retrospective reflection.

The researchers note limitations of their study, including that it focused only on novice educators and one particular program. They call for future research to explore how previous experiences and expectations impact YEIGL, as well as how YEIGL might occur for more experienced educators and help them remain resilient in their positions.

The study concludes that as environmental education becomes increasingly critical for addressing evolving environmental crises, understanding and leveraging the youth-educator learning relationship can benefit both educators and students, creating more effective environmental education experiences overall.