Education Commons^™

Nature As The Teacher: Exploring The Development And Growth Of Nature Schools In The U.S., Emily Gehrdes

Community Engagement Student Work

Nature Schools are places in which achievement, curiosity, development, and inspiration transpire in natural environments. In the early 60’s, Nature Schools began to appear around the country. Since then, many such schools have appeared; today there are over two hundred nature schools throughout the US. Yet although a substantial amount of research has been done on nature schools, there exists no baseline or census exploring these programs’ strengths and weaknesses. This capstone research project investigated these schools’ policies, procedures, and curriculum through a multi-phase mixed-methods research design. Specifically, a national survey was distributed to the directors of approximately 140 U.S. …