Regenerating Our Place: Fostering a Sense of Place Through Rehabilitation and Place-Based Education

This study examines the effects of a place-based intervention program on the sense of place of Bedouin elementary school students. These students live on the banks of the polluted Hebron Stream in Israel, where a three-pronged restoration program has recently been established, including the stream’s rehabilitation, the establishment of local waste treatment, and an environmental education program. Our study follows groups of fifth-graders (n = 107) throughout a 2-year, place-based learning program in the Hebron Stream area. The program’s purpose is to teach students about authentic environmental phenomena in the stream’s surroundings, while fostering their sense of attachment to the stream. Data were gathered, before, during, and after the intervention, via drawings and individual interviews, and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The findings show that after the intervention, Hebron Stream became part of the students’ sense of place, with many students drawing a cleaner, more esthetically pleasing stream, and about a third drawing the stream as a “healthy” ecosystem. The students’ explanations of their drawings showed a rise in their awareness of the stream’s importance as a natural resource, and an increased awareness of the relationship between the stream, the community, and political-economic situation. Though they were openly critical of flaws in the current progress of the restoration process, they also expressed optimism regarding the improvement in the stream’s conditions that contrasted sharply with their earlier fatalistic attitudes. This change in attitude was also expressed in declared changes in the students’ personal environmental behaviors. The results of this study provide a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between people and their immediate environment. It offers both pedagogical and theoretical recommendations for studies of sense of place and place-based education initiatives undertaken in contaminated natural environments

Challenges in measuring "connectedness to nature" among indigenous children: lessons from the Negev Bedouin

Culturally adapted tools for measuring connectedness to nature are important, since attitudes and perceptions toward nature cannot be universalized. They are influenced by a wide range of factors, like individuals’ experience in their home environment, safety concerns and a variety of other sociocultural factors. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a model for a cultural adaptation process, through which suitable nature connectedness questionnaires can be created. Our approach is based on “Third Space Theory,” which laid the groundwork for the development of culturally adapted questionnaires that combine Western categories for measuring nature connectedness with elements that specifically reflect the local culture of an indigenous community. The paper details the adaptation process of a questionnaire designed to learn about the nature connectedness of 5th grade students living in unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev Desert. The process enlisted the input of 58 fifth grade students (28 boys and 30 girls) and four professionals from the fields of education and environmental education. It incorporated two different types of interviews, personal, semi-structured interviews, and interviews with small groups of students as they orally completed different iterations of the questionnaire. Thematic content analysis was conducted to reveal the various sociocultural aspects of the relationship between Bedouin children and their natural environment. The results of the paper include: (a) the seven-stage development process of the culturally adapted nature connectedness questionnaire, and (b) examples of the types of information that the culturally adapted questionnaire reveals, which a standard nature connectedness questionnaire might not provide

Indigenous children's connectedness to nature: the potential influence of culture, gender and exposure to a contaminated environment

This study investigates the concept of “connectedness to nature” among students from an indigenous Bedouin community, whose relationship with nature is influenced by a variety of cultural, social and environmental factors, not least of which is the fact that the environment in which they live is highly contaminated. We asked 294 fifth- and sixth-grade students (130 boys and 164 girls), who live in the highly rural Bedouin villages in Israel’s Negev desert, to complete an open questionnaire that was specifically designed to elicit detailed information about these particular students’ connection to nature. The paper presents the results of two analyses of this questionnaire. The first—a quantitative analysis—divides the students’ answers into five aspects of connectedness to nature (nature enjoyment, empathy for living creatures, sense of oneness, sense of responsibility and experience of nature in my immediate environment). The second—an inductive, qualitative analysis of the students’ explanations and elaborations of their answers—provides a more nuanced description of the various social, historical and situational factors that influence these students’ relationship with their environment. It then addresses the tension between these two analyses, highlighting the limitations of “traditional” categories of nature connectedness while showing how these can nevertheless be used to elicit detailed, complex and pertinent information. It concludes by demonstrating how this information, if analyzed critically through its correspondence, or lack of correspondence, with the original assumptions of the statements that elicited it, might be used in the development of place-based environmental education programs for specific populations