Investigating Students’ Connectedness with Nature: A Multidimensional Approach for Environmental Education in Schools

One of the main goals of Environmental Education is to foster pro-environmental behavior to achieve a sustainable society. An individual’s connectedness with nature positively correlates with pro-environmental behavior and is therefore considered a crucial characteristic to be fostered in formal and informal environmental education. Although the literature contains numerous—mainly quantitative—studies on preadolescents’ connectedness with nature, only a few have focused on an in-depth understanding of connectedness with nature from a multi-perspective approach. Therefore, to address gaps in the research on connectedness with nature in school students, three main aims guided the studies within this dissertation: (1) to investigate students’ self-reported information about the reasons for their connectedness with nature; (2) to explore the perceptions of students’ representations of nature and their nature connectedness; and (3) to examine students’ longitudinal changes in their connectedness with nature. The dissertation accomplishes these goals through three manuscripts that sequentially and progressively build upon each other while drawing on diverse methodological approaches: a mixed-methods study, a qualitative photo analysis, a cross-lagged panel model, and a qualitative content analysis. This multi-perspective approach makes it possible to investigate connectedness with nature on several levels: addressing conceptual problems of the construct, combining connectedness with visual methods to engage a broader group of students (e.g., in more inclusive settings), and understanding long-term changes in connectedness with nature. The findings of the three manuscripts deepen our scientific understanding of connectedness with nature among middle school students, suggest opportunities for future research, and offer multiple implications for teaching in formal and informal environmental education settings.