Child and forest

Doctoral project by Isabell Dietze-Fründt:

Child and forest: Pupils' concept(s) of forests in the context of education for sustainable development (working title)

In the dissertation, an educational program is first developed that takes up current factual teaching concepts on sustainable development, especially on the subject of forests.

In a second step, the implementation of this program will provide an answer to the question of how children learn to understand the forest as an important ecosystem worthy of protection .

This work is therefore concerned with two interrelated research projects that build on each other:

• Development, implementation and evaluation of an educational program
• Research into children's perceptions of the subject matter of the program

Both research concerns are to be related to each other within the framework of a qualitative research design. The educational program challenges children to engage with the topic. The ideas and thought patterns formed in the process are the subject of the research. Based on this formation of ideas, it is possible to retrospectively assess the extent to which the educational program actually initiates ideas, takes up existing ideas and develops them further. The assumption here is that there is an indissoluble connection between teaching and learning in educational processes for children in schools.

Objectives:

• To make children's ideas, perceptions and thought patterns visible, especially on the subject of forests
• Support existing ways of thinking in the areas of forests and sustainability

The knowledge gained can contribute to a targeted implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (anchored in the National Action Plan of the German Federal Republic 2017 and in the Federal Government's Sustainability Strategy 2021).

Research design:

• The children's ideas are collected in the form of research books (ideas in process) and group discussions (selective) and evaluated using qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (2015).
• The educational program is embedded in a design-based research approach.

Good practice collections of curriculum designs that have already been developed (including the Framework for Global Development Education of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development 2016) offer numerous points of reference, but the focus on the child's perspective with a qualitative approach remains a desideratum of research.

In order to ultimately enable children to become individuals who think and act sustainably, it is necessary to take a detailed look at the addressees of the National Action Plan and the Guiding Framework itself: How do children think and what do children's ideas on specific sustainability issues, in particular the forest, look like? The central research questions "What ideas do children have about the forest?" and "How can children experience the forest (as worthy of protection)?" form the core of the dissertation.

Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Martina Knörzer

For further information please contact:
Isabell Dietze-Fründt