Table 2 - uploaded by Jennifer Ma
Content may be subject to copyright.
Measures of Central Tendency and Dispersion for FS Wellbeing
Source publication
As part of a two-week outdoor education expedition, 18 high school and college students (11 males and 7 females) were engaged in evidence-based wellbeing activities, such as journaling, three new gratitudes, and meditation. Using a mixed methods approach, the aim was to investigate the impact of these activities - conceptualised as a 'curriculum of...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... significant changes in FS score were found for any of the follow-up measurements. Instead, levels of wellbeing appeared to decline to baseline levels, though non-significantly, after the trip (Table 2). Together with the qualitative data, this suggests that the explicit teaching of the giving curriculum made an important contribution to the wellbeing of the students across the duration of the island stay, but that these effects did not appear to be sustained when the students returned to their daily settings. ...
Similar publications
Background:
Participants in Outdoor Education Programmes (OEPs) presumably benefit from these programmes in terms of their social and personal development, academic achievement and physical activity (PA). The aim of this systematic review was to identify studies about regular compulsory school- and curriculum-based OEPs, to categorise and evaluate...
This study investigated one-semester outdoor education program impact on adolescents’ perceived self-authorship—the ability to form our identity independently from the expectations of external individuals and the capacity to invent our beliefs, identity, and relationships (Baxter Magolda, 1998; Kegan, 1982)—as measured by the Self-Authorship Questi...
While much attention has been paid to what students learn in outdoor education settings, little has been paid to the process through which that learning occurs. The purpose of this study was to identify the mechanisms through which students report learning one of six targeted objectives on courses offered by the National Outdoor Leadership School....
The aim of this research is to determine the effects of various teaching methods and activities, which are used in environmental education lessons, on the environmental literacy level of classroom pre-service teachers. This study was carried out including the classroom pre-service teachers, who took the environmental education course in the academi...
Citations
... In this program, teaching staff explicitly adapted curricula to incorporate activities that aimed to promote positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviours through 'giving' for student engagement and wellbeing across two, two-week outdoor education expeditions conducted in 2013 and 2014. For example, in addition to partaking in conventional outdoor activities such as snorkelling, diving, and nature walks, students were also exposed to activities such as 'sunset solitude' (journaling and daily gratitude), 'sunrise warriors' (yoga), meditation, 'SELF CARE AIMS' (strategy and domains for self-care), and discussion around how these activities were aligned with positive psychology and wellbeing research around meaningful happiness throughout the trip (see Nielsen & Ma, 2016;Nielsen & Ma, 2018 for specific program details and other reported outcomes). ...
... The need to explore and understand underlying principles for student engagement and wellbeing led us to assess the effects of a 'giving curriculum' (Nielsen & Ma, 2016) and develop a beginning framework for identifying the social and environmental dimensions in which it is possible for students to be something for others -termed an 'ecology of giving' Intent Modelled Planned (explicit + explore) Incidental Crisis (Nielsen & Ma, 2018). In this study, the focus was on formulating a beginning framework for the pedagogies with which teachers can intentionally teach giving behaviours and attitudes in a variety of ways-not because these modes of interaction (modelling, explicit instruction, etc.) are fundamentally different to good teaching in general, but because they might have significantly different mental, physical, and environmental wellbeing implications for students when applied through the lens of giving pedagogy. ...
The present study took place across two outdoor education trips to the Great Barrier Reef with two groups of college students (N = 36; 16-19 years), five staff, and one of the authors (TWN). The aim was to explore how an explicit understanding and implementation of the wellbeing research around cultivating generous behaviour for meaningful happiness could be ‘experienced’ by staff and students and articulated as an educational framework, or ‘pedagogy’. Hermeneutic phenomenology was used to record and interpret pedagogical transactions of giving. Six repeated themes were identified: (1) exploration, (2) modelling, (3) explicit instruction, (4) incidental learning, (5) crisis management, and (6) intent. Discussed as instrumental for promoting eudaimonic happiness (‘meaningful living’), these categories may assist educators by providing a broader spectrum of teaching pedagogies with which to not only improve engagement and wellbeing in young people, but also improve their own sense of professional satisfaction and wellbeing.
... Through observing and categorizing pedagogies of giving in previous work (Nielsen, 2011;Nielsen & Ma, 2016, we were able to identify five layers of giving ecology: Whole Environment Communities Others Self ...
... We mentioned earlier that the teaching of values and character remains abstract and intellectual unless they are acted upon. In schools, we have observed "values and character education" lessons that were behaviorist and didactic in nature (Nielsen, 2013), whereas we have also observed that, where educators know that values are a means to a higher end, rather than an end in themselves, efforts tend to more successfully nourish wellbeing and the meaningful life in both students and staff (Nielsen & Ma, 2016. Such an understanding might be reflected in the meta-analytic findings on character education, in particular: The development of students' virtues seems effective when combined with making positive and healthy behavioral changes (action) in many aspects of life (ecology). ...
... They essentially apply the concept of place attachment-a bond formed between individuals and meaningful settings (Scannell and Gifford, 2010:1)-to pedagogy. Similar to my findings, place-based outdoor learning has helped youth apply knowledge to real-life challenges and understand social, cultural, economic, and physical interconnectedness in environmental decision making (Nielsen, 2016). Further, the "attentive connection" has a formative impact on sustainability identities, including greater care for the natural and human elements (Bates et al., 2019: 95). ...
Online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected student academic performance as well as mental, physical, and social wellbeing. During a lockdown at the University of Toronto in Canada (September 2020–April 2021), my students expressed an underlying sense of monotony yet uncertainty. I recalled a contrasting paradox from the teachings of Indigenous Cree on mental wellness in land-based experiences: a sense of stimulation and security that we can liken to variations of Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory. I modified my Environmental Science and Pathways to Sustainability course to support stimulation and security through embodied, interactive pedagogy at student-selected individual field sites. My main goals were to (i) support student mental wellness and (ii) provide an alternative to experiential field trips for understanding and connecting with nature as an adaptive complex system. I prompted students with field activities contextualized by a course narrative that purposefully directed attention to nature through intrinsically motivated curiosity, exploration, and discovery; conditions more similar to evolutionary environments of adaptedness than “getting away” in passive retreats. Student weekly field observations and reflections culminated in a post-intervention Reflection Assignment (n = 15) which became the bases of thematic and narrative analysis. Other assignments were added to my evaluation of complexity comprehension. The intervention successfully instilled security and stimulation via purpose-directed attention to different aspects of nature in the same setting followed by periods of knowledge integration. This empowered students with sustainability mindsets indicated by greater self-reported: sense of coherence, change agency, cognitive and affective restoration, nature connectedness, nature relatedness, social connectedness, and pro-environmental values. Assignments demonstrated an understanding of the environment as an adaptive complex system that was not present at the beginning of the course. Some students’ self-construct adopted nature and its complexity, empowering them with greater trait resilience. This work speaks to opportunities for merging psychological restoration and analytical curricula by integrating cognitive and sensory meaningfulness in sustainability narratives. It asks scholars to reflect on how we operationalize foundational theories of Environmental Psychology based on ancestral survival conditions and encourages empirical research to consider how sociocultural contexts can direct attention to nature through purposeful inquiry.
Using hermeneutic phenomenology to aid the reader ‘experience’ the data collected, this study reports on 18 college students, 4 staff members and the author's trip to a remote island on the Great Barrier Reef. It is a story of the (re)discovery of the social and natural ecologies that bind us together, and of how explicit teaching and learning about these ecologies can make a difference to young people's abilities to consciously be part of, contribute to, and sustain these ecologies. A grounded theory of five dimensions of giving (to self, others, communities, environment, and the whole) is offered as a beginning framework from which to imbue teaching and learning with meaning and social concern.
