Browsing by Author "Cudworth, Dave"

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    The importance of Forest School and the Pathways to nature connection
    (Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, 2021-02-18) Cudworth, Dave; Lumber, Ryan
    Over the past 25 years Forest School in the UK has been growing in popularity as part of a wider resurgence of interest in outdoor learning. A key driver behind this recurrence of interest has been a growing concern over the lack of child exposure to outdoor experiences and with the natural world and their ensuing nature-deficit disorder. This article considers Forest School as linked with the concept of nature connection that is the sensation of belonging to a wider natural community. This sense of belonging developed by being in nature can also be a key factor in promoting attachment and sense of place which in turn is associated with the promotion of health, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours. As such the origins towards achieving nature connection are a formal part of the Forest School Association’s (FSA 2016) Forest School principals, with growing research linking Forest School and nature connection as concomitant. Recent work has suggested that contact, emotion, meaning, compassion, and beauty are key pathways for the formation of nature connection and there is a strong need to better understand children’s nature connection in this context. Further, from the premise that what goes on in spaces and places is fundamentally linked to both social and spatial processes, this article also attempts to understand the spatialities of Forest School in order to frame the development of nature connection within a socio-spatial analytic.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Motivating the learner: developing autonomy, competence and relatedness through forest school practice
    (Springer, 2023-11-18) Cudworth, Dave; Tymms, M.
    An increasing body of literature continues to highlight the relationship between our connection with nature and the positive effects on our physical health and psychological well-being as well as enhancing our motivations and engagements within learning contexts. However, with more time being spent indoors and free time increasingly structured by adults’, concerns surrounding the positive mental health and well-being of many Western children and young people is being increasingly questioned. Furthermore, with schooling in England becoming increasingly curriculum led and outcomes orientated as it strives for greater levels of performativity and accountability, much of children and young people’s schooling experiences are largely organised and structured by teachers for their own purposes and expectations. Viewed through Self-Determination Theory (SDT), these are practices that promote sub-optimal learner behaviours which can lead to increased levels of student passivity and disengagement. SDT proposes that positive mental health, and with that, higher levels of student engagement, requires the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs; autonomy, competence and relatedness. In their work, Barrable and Arvanitis (2019) outline the conceptual link between SDT and Forest School (FS) practice and call for empirical research to substantiate how FS can promote autonomy, competence, and relatedness amongst learners. Therefore, in response to this call, the purpose of this paper is to draw on empirical data, including participant observations and semi-structured interviews with practitioners, to further substantiate how FS could (re)connect learners with nature, improve their psychological well-being and enrich the quality of their engagement with learning contexts more widely.
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    Moving through the Woods: Developing Children's Connection and Appreciation of Nature
    (Itwana, Leiden University, Netherlands, 2021-02-01) Cudworth, Dave
    I have always been interested in the importance of our connection to nature and its relationship with sustainability. Thus, I am particularly keen to examine how engagement with FS can support children’s connection to nature and the extent to which it can go some way in developing their pro-environmental behaviors and ideas of sustainability (Kuo et al., 2019). I am also interested in how involvement in FS is developing children’s confidence (Murray & O’Brien, 2005) and motivation to learn (Skinner & Chi, 2012), as well as how it can have a positive impact on their well-being (Capaldi et al., 2014). However, it is to the former that I think is most important and I am minded of the comments from a practitioner involved in FS in one primary school who told me that “…we’re seeing apocalyptic reports of the environment and these things are linked, it’s our artificiality. We’re obsessed by the artificial and I just think that FS is a way of fighting back against that”. This essay is to share briefly with you some preliminary insights from my current research and interest in FS Education. My current research project draws on a range of empirical methods including focus groups and interviews with teachers, practitioners and children, as well as observations and participant observations of FS practice in a number of schools. Further data is also drawn from field notes that I kept during a FS Leader programme I attended from April 2017 through to May 2018
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    Promoting an emotional connection to nature and other animals via Forest School: Disrupting the spaces of neo-liberal performativity
    (International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 2020-08-03) Cudworth, Dave
    The concept of children’s alienation from, and reconnection to, nature has gained international interest.  The purpose of this paper is to explore how forest school as a growing phenomenon in the UK is promoting this reconnection to nature as well as benefiting children’s wellbeing.  At the same time forest school is providing children and young people with a more divergent learning experience, away from the structural pressures of the neo-liberal classroom. With its emphasis on play-based learning in wooded areas, and the freedom to make connections and spatially engage with what is around them at their own pace, such engagement in these ‘alternative’ learning spaces can support the development of a post-human discourse and sensibilities.  This is fundamental in developing children’s emotional connection in promoting pro-environmental behaviours and their attitudes towards valuing and protecting the non-human. 
This paper draws on field notes documented during Forest School leader training undertook by the author from April 2017 to May 2018.  Further data was collected in the form of participant observations of forest school sessions in three schools; semi-structured interviews with the head teachers of these schools and a focus group with three practitioners.  Supplementary data will also draw on the experiences of a group of 2nd year Education Studies university students after completing a module on Forest School and Outdoor learning, led by the author. 
This article finds that the more children engage with wooded areas and interact with the natural environment and other creatures within that space, the more it affords meaning to them.  This in turn promotes a sense of belonging and environmental stewardship, particularly in relation to non-human creatures.  This article also finds that where schools provide forest school opportunities on their sites, such provision is conducive to supporting more creative practices within the ‘spatialities’ of the neo-liberal classroom. 
Neo-liberal education policy with its focus on high stakes testing and performance outcomes increasingly shapes the spatial practices of school life.  Consequently, time spent outdoors and its relationship with intrinsic learning has declined in many schools. With many schools placing less importance on outdoor learning children and young people have become further alienated from engaging in different ways with their environments.  Further, data highlighting the link between FS and children’s interest in plants and other animals has not been the subject of much research.