Nurturing ecological literacy beyond classrooms

How do we address the nature-deficit disorder?

When we think about what the term ‘ecological literacy’ represents, we immediately envision outdoor spaces, the natural world and children exploring these spaces. We probably do not associate this with images of children exploring the natural world sitting inside a classroom. However, that is exactly what nature/ecological literacy has been reduced to.

We teach lessons on the natural environment and the various species that exist in it, through books and digital media, including photos and videos. Often all this is done without having to step outside of the classrooms.

Such practices have left children disconnected from the natural world. It has led to something called the “Nature Deficit Disorder” (NDD). NDD was coined by author Richard Louv in his 2005 book, ‘Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature deficit disorder’. NDD, says Louv, has led to negative physical effects on children. This has also affected their long-term mental well-being.

How do we sow curiosity in children’s minds on nature and natural spaces, to help them realize their place in the natural world? That we share this planet with thousands of other species of flora and fauna, and these resources are not for us to singularly consume and exhaust, to the point of extinction.

Movies like “WALL-E”, although made for entertainment, have an undeniable message. Such films do not seem that dystopian anymore. Some version of it seems highly likely in the not-too-distant future.

Children are glued more and more to their devices. They are, more often that not, confined to the indoors. Outdoor spaces are considered unsafe. And ‘nature’ exists somewhere far away in a forest. In this context, urban biodiversity is also not a familiar concept. Cities are built by destroying natural spaces, without much thought given to cohabitation. This is the setting in which students in urban spaces generally grow up.

Is experiential nature education the solution?

Most people can recall their childhood, and experiences of outdoor play and exploration. These were an integral part of growing up. The benefits of growing up with these experiences are immeasurable and incomparable. As the cliché goes, the greatest teacher is, indeed, the natural world itself.

There are clear benefits to outdoor learning experiences for children, both cognitive and physical. Some alternative schools have successfully adopted these outdoor learning practices. However, the mainstream education system is largely behind on this.

A beautiful, and perhaps the best, example of utilization of outdoor spaces for learning involves the ‘Forest schools’. Established in the 1950s in Denmark, and popularized across other countries, Forest Schools are for children of all ages. Their pedagogy is based on exploring natural spaces, where children form a deep bond with nature and grow up empathizing with it.

Forests schools has spread to many geographies. This includes India, where a few have been established. These have demonstrated that mainstream education can coexist with alternate education systems, where outdoor learning experiences are an integral part.

The challenges of activity-based nature education in the outdoors

There are fundamental challenges to incorporating outdoor education activities in the curriculum. These relate to how education is perceived and how it has evolved. Traditionally, formal education policies and curricula have provided very limited or no opportunities for outdoor learning.

Beyond this, schools are burdened with existing courses to be completed by the year-end. Most do not have the bandwidth to deviate from the existing curriculum and pedagogies to incorporate outdoor learning practices. To add to this, teachers do not often have the time, the capacities or the knowledge to include outdoor learning activities in the subjects they teach.

This leaves us with ‘extracurricular’ activities and programs in schools, such as The Environment Education Programme (EEP), which was launched by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, in India. EEP “aims to supplement the knowledge that the children and young generation gain from classrooms with experience from nature and hands-on activities”.

NEP, nature education and outdoor learning

National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which is now being implemented across the country, emphasizes the importance of experiential learning for students. This includes outdoor learning experiences. The policy encourages a shift from rote learning to a more hands-on, experiential approach.

NEP 2020 notes that outdoor learning isn’t just an extracurricular activity. It envisages this to be integrated into the formal curriculum. This is hoped to allow for interdisciplinary learning, including the sciences, social sciences, the arts, crafts, and vocational skills. Schools are encouraged to have the flexibility to include local knowledge and traditional skills, which can be taught through outdoor activities.

Nature education, the Wipro earthian way

The hope is that NEP 2020 will create opportunities for programs like Wipro earthian to be actively included in schools. Wipro earthian is an initiative in the nature and sustainability education space by Wipro. It relies on outdoor experiences for learning on sustainability related issues. Designed for both school and college students, it was launched in 2011. It is implemented through a network of partner organizations across the country.

The school program enables students to explore their surroundings, and research on issues related waste, water and biodiversity. The program’s primary point of contact involves teachers, both in government and private schools. It has three activity-based booklets. Most of the activities are designed to take children outside of their school campuses, explore their surroundings, interview various stakeholders, and write reports based on their findings and reflections. These reports enter a nationwide competition. The national and regional level winning teams are recognized for their exceptional work.

In the program’s early days, the competition was primarily an essay writing exercise. It needed little to no exploration outside of classrooms. In 2015, the program team realized that there was a potential to create a unique experience for school students through hands-on activities and outdoor learning opportunities.

Now, participating students need to do activities that enable exploration and observations. These create opportunities to deep dive into sustainability related issues in their immediate surroundings. This process encourages students to relate their findings with larger planetary conditions. It also has the potential to unlock other skills such as report writing, teamwork and documentation.

Creating an ecosystem of learners through the Sustainability Educators Network

In 2018, we launched the Wipro Sustainability Educator Network (SEN). The SEN is a collective of grassroots sustainability educators. They evangelize the main Wipro earthian competition to schools in their locations. These trained individuals are housed in organizations working in fields such as conservation and education.

The educators in our partner organizations, take the program to different clusters in districts across the country. They also conduct teacher training. In the process, the teachers are introduced to the concepts and processes of outdoor learning.

Nature education in practice: voices from the field

Nobina Gupta is the founder of Disappearing Dialogues (DD), a CSO in Kolkata. DD works on preserving the cultural and natural heritage of marginalized regions and communities. It is also one of the partners for the Wipro earthian program. Nobina has been a sustainability educator for the program since 2022.

Nobina shares, “True learning occurs when the body, mind and soul connect with the subjects. Outdoor learning broadens students’ holistic understanding and emotional connections, and fosters creativity. By immersing themselves in nature, students explore the deep interconnections between ecological resources and human existence. These experiences instil a sense of urgency for behavioural change to care for and conserve nature.”

Through her experience of working on the Wipro earthian program, Nobina reflects that its activity-based, experiential learning approach cultivates sensitivity to the lived environment. It has been empowering students to recognize and implement actions driving positive change. To amplify this, DD facilitates Wetland Discovery Educational Trails, Nature Explorer Labs, and Creative Ecology Engagements, etc., in the wetlands of East Kolkata. These initiatives give the youth opportunities to research, analyze and respond to their own assets and challenges. The process deepens their commitment to ecological leadership.

From another distant corner of the country, Chanchal Singha Roy, the guide teacher from Government Senior Secondary School, Kadamtala, shares that the program has had similar impact on his students in the Middle Andamans. According to him, the activities in the Wipro earthian booklets have created a continuous learning environment. His students have been exploring the local areas. This has enabled them to develop their observational skills. He further states that the program has connected the students, the teachers, and the communities of parents.

From the north of the country, Shivakankshi Ahuja, a Wipro earthian student from St. Lukes Senior Secondary School in Solan, in the state of Himachal Pradesh, shared that a simple exercise such as stepping out and identifying the plants in her surroundings was the best way of learning. She hopes that the rest of the curriculum would include an outdoor component and be exploratory in nature.

Over the years, the teachers have come to appreciate the program’s benefits. These are in terms of both building their own capacities in sustainability education, and in what it offers their students, which they otherwise do not get from their existing school curricula.

The educators are given support in designing contextual, place-based community engagement programs for students and teachers. In some cases, parents and communities in their network are made a part of their efforts. These engagements are hands-on and exploratory in nature.

A few examples of community engagement activities include the following. Citizen science workshops on mushroom identification, and demystifying the ecological role of mushrooms, have been conducted by our educators in Eco Vigyan Foundation in Himachal Pradesh. A Bird Atlas has been developed by our educators in Goa working in Arannya Environment Research Organisation (AERO). Here they involved the student community in documenting Goa’s diverse bird species. Kids Climate Connect is a program launched by our SEN partner Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology in Wayanad, Kerala. They have encouraged their network of students to measure and document Wayanad’s weather and climatic conditions. Our educators in Disappearing Dialogues (DD), based in Kolkata, have been working with student communities as well. DD has been conducting regular visits and workshops for them on the vital importance of East Kolkata’s wetlands.

These are just a few examples of educators from SEN developing contextual and place based activities to create awareness on pressing environmental issues. These have also helped students connect better with their natural environment.

In conclusion

Our experience at Wipro earthian shows that it is possible to create curiosity in young minds. By better connecting to nature, empathy for other species and the environment can be fostered.

However, programs such as Wipro earthian are standalone and are considered extracurricular. It is of critical importance to integrate these activities into curricula and across disciplines.

Furthermore, deploying a whole school approach for such programs has the potential to create a generation of individuals who are aware and sensitized to environmental issues around them. This will also equip students with skills to deliver solutions for a sustainable world.

The success of creating and implementing such learning spaces outside of classrooms needs the commitment of various stakeholders. These include school management, teachers, students, governments and CSOs.