Month: February 2020

A Review on “VITAMIN N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life” By Richard Louv

by Elham (Ellie)
  • Title: Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life;
  • Author: Richard Louv;
  • Publication Date: 2016; City, State, Country: New York, New York, United States of America;
  • Published by: Algonquin Paperbacks;
  • Pages: 277;
  • Price: $ 15.95.
  • Subject: Introducing the ways that can be engaged to reduce a new phenomenon named: “Nature Deficit Disorder.”
  • Scope: Vitamin N has been built on Louv’s other two books: “Last Child in the Wood,” and “Nature Principle.” Unlike two other books that endeavored to talk about the importance of taking action against social disconnect from the natural world, this book introduces various activities through which parents, families, and teachers, to some extent, can conquer this problem not only for their children but also for themselves and the society.

People who were participating in 2009 Children and Nature Network annual gathering, saw Janet Ady _Senior Advisor of US Fish and Wildlife Service_ having a medicine bottle, claiming that the bottle is full of Vitamin N. The instruction was simple: Go on a nature walk, watch birds, play in nature, etc. _Use daily, Expires never, and Refills unlimited. Her message was completely straight: the wood is Ritalin, nature calms and focuses human, and excited its senses _as Richard Louv asserts in memories of his childhood. This might be the beginning of Vitamin N’s story.

Richard Louv has a point in warning humankind of the advancement of technology, increasing intentions, and pressures of human lives, urbanization, and industrialization of environments, which all cause people to get more and more disconnected from nature. The pandemic of inactivity and pursuing this lifestyle would eventually lead to a huge amount of mental and physical problems, especially for the younger generation, he believes.

On the other hand, being in direct connection with nature based on numerous documentation provided by Richard Louv in this book, Supports creativity and problem solving, Enhances cognitive abilities, boosts immune systems, Improves academic performance, Increases physical activity, alleviates anxiety and stress, Improves nutrition, Improves eyesight, Improves social relations, Improves self-discipline, supports multiple development domains, reduces ADHD, prevents obesity, improves family bonds, etc.

I appreciated the extensive list of nature-based family activities that the author has listed in his book and the way he has accomplished his goals. Of value are also the resources that are listed with regards to each activity, e.g., the places where activities can take place, places where the necessary equipment for each activity can be purchased and/or related clubs and associations that can facilitate certain activities. Another advantage of the listed activities is the simplicity of them. For example, collecting insects or different plants in the backyard can be easily pursued by most families. One can also tell that the author has thought about the disadvantages of certain families when designing and introducing each activity. Activities are not limited to a specific age range, or a special group, a variety of target groups, have been addressed in the book.

While most activities are family-oriented, they take into consideration the importance of self-esteem and the practice of freedom of choice of the children. Also, activities are not just listed. The benefits of each are usually provided to the reader along with a qualitative quote by leading practitioners and, stories of real people, which adds to the credibility of the techniques and activities. Each activity usually involves a list of related resources for people who are interested to read more about each area, which I believe is one of the strong aspects of this book.

In terms of organization, the book contains eight sections. All sections start with an introduction which generally includes a personal story related to the main theme of the section, followed by the list of diverse activities under different subsections and conclude with real stories of families who have participated in selected activities in each section _This organization reminds me of Childhood and Nature Design Principles for Educators, by David Sobel, 2008. These eight sections talk about: 1) Building stronger relationship with the family, among friends, and in the community; 2) Training mind for multitasking activities, and empowering abilities in different aspects; 3) Making a balance between the virtual and the real world; 4) Preserving inborn sense of wonder, and being healthy in nature; 5) Create a nature-rich community, home, school and environment, as well as creating restorative home and workplace; 6) To raise resilient children, who are ready to face variety of risks; 7) Growing in wild nature and exploring natural world nearby or far; 8) Being a natural teacher, and developing a nature-smart career.

Despite all the positive aspects of this book, I have several reservations concerning this book. First, I cannot attest that this book contains 500 different activities. Despite the variety of activities, a large number of them seem repetitive. At the same time, working on the ground for ten years, I personally can think of and reference a large number of activities that are missing from this book. I was not expecting this many possible activities missing from a list of 500 nature-based activities. For example, FAO’s books _ Food Security and Climate Change Challenge Badge, or Biodiversity Challenge Badge_ and its activities are missing to a large extent.

Second, considering the repetition of the activities, the organization of the book is confusing at points. It is not very clear why the author has separated some activities from one another or has placed one in one section and not another. The main message/theme of each section is also not clear.

The book does contain some multi-cultural activities. However, the focus of the majority of the book is local and its generalization and applicability to other regions in the world are under question. This is especially true when the existence of certain organizations is necessary for conducting certain activities. In all, for families who are suffering from weak relationship and lack of connection, parents who are worried about children’s health and mind operation, for grandparents who want to be more close to their grandchildren, for mentors and teacher who want to help young generation to be more powerful, and for environmentalist who have a desire to save nature, this book could be a good start.

Competence-Based Education

by Elham (Ellie)

In order to adequately prepare learners to address today’s sustainability challenges, education needs to find innovative ways to provide learning opportunities focused on challenges and solutions while providing the framework of systems thinking, interpersonal, and change agent skills (Anderson, 2015). Recently, educational systems are going toward student-centered, or learner-centered rather than educator-centered. In other words, instead of working on content, they are oriented mostly around competence-centered curricula (Bergsmann, Schultes, Winter, Schober, & Spiel, 2015). From the first steps of considering ESD, international debates were around competencies (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010), so we can declare that competency-based methods for teaching are relatively new (Segalas et al., 2010), although the first introduction of the concept of “competence” itself goes back to 1890 (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010). Many scholars published their research on competency-based in the United States around the 1960s and 1970s, and after that, interests in competency-based education and training were increased (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010). Utilizing competency-based approached has been discussed to be a part of agenda of many faculties since the late 1990s (Segalas et al., 2010), and now, many approaches have been encouraged to train capable students with the knowledge, abilities, values, and attitudes needed to contribute to sustainable development.

Based on what Struyven and De Meyst assert, competency-based education is “creating opportunities for students and workers, close to their world of experience in a meaningful learning environment wherein the learner can develop integrated, performance-oriented capabilities to handle the problems in practice” (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010, p. 1496). Promoting competencies are not similar to regular knowledge gaining, although we can learn them, they are not teachable at least through traditional knowledge-based method (Barth, Godemann, Rieckmann, & Stoltenberg, 2007). Competency is an individual skill for performing and acting; in other words, it is an ability to do specific things that are in contrast with the ability to gain knowledge (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010). So, the question is, how can it be acquired? As sustainability becomes a part of education, approaches should focus on empowering learners to understand and handle sustainability challenges so that they can be prepared to be systemic-problem solvers, game changers and capable managers (Anderson, 2015; Wiek, Withycombe, Redman, & Mills, 2011). Competencies are a representation of the potential for behavior, not the behavior itself. So, whether competencies are genuinely put into practice or not depends on the circumstances (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010).

What makes Competence-oriented educational concepts different from traditional pedagogies is that the focus of the former is on the ‘output’ of educational processes, while the latter emphasizes the ‘input.’ It means that it seeks the answer to the question of “what should be learned,” not “what should be taught” (Hesselbarth & Schaltegger, 2014; Segalas et al., 2010). The mission of the output approach is to asks what problem-solving abilities, what kind of managing tactics, which analytical abilities learners might need to be able to participate in social action actively? (Hesselbarth & Schaltegger, 2014; Segalas et al., 2010) The advantage of having this method is that through this approach learner can decide about the content of the education by him/herself. It means the content can be relatively freely selected based on personal and previous experiences, motivations and local and individual everyday life. The root of competency-based education is in goal-orientation and individualization which make learning goals explicit for every individual. Then each person can develop skills of appropriate actions or competencies by pursuing learning activities in the experiencing process (Struyven & De Meyst, 2010). This can increase learners’ interest in the learning content and their acquisition of skills (Segalas et al., 2010).

 

References:

Anderson, E. L. (2015). Developing Key Sustainability Competencies through Real-World Learning Experiences. Evaluating Community Environmental Services.

Barth, M., Godemann, J., Rieckmann, M., & Stoltenberg, U. (2007). Developing key competencies for sustainable development in higher education. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 8(4), 416–430.

Bergsmann, E., Schultes, M. T., Winter, P., Schober, B., & Spiel, C. (2015). Evaluation of competence-based teaching in higher education: From theory to practice. Evaluation and Program Planning, 52, 1–9.

Hesselbarth, C., & Schaltegger, S. (2014). Educating change agents for sustainability – Learnings from the first sustainability management master of business administration. Journal of Cleaner Production, 62, 24–36.

Struyven, K., & De Meyst, M. (2010). Competence-based teacher education: Illusion or reality? An assessment of the implementation status in Flanders from teachers’ and students’ points of view. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(8), 1495–1510.

Wiek, A., Withycombe, L., Redman, C., & Mills, S. B. (2011). Moving forward on competence in sustainability research and problem solving. Environment, 53(2), 3–12.

Landscape Visualization: Its Application for Participatory Decision Making

by Elham (Ellie)

The process of engaging communities, stakeholders, and the public in decision making has been always a crucial factor in natural resource management. Recently, most environmental research, assessments, or modeling do not conduct without some sort of reference to stakeholders and their involvement in the process. Although this is a positive development, in a myriad of cases, stakeholders’ engagement has been quite nominal, and complete successful engagement is barely achievable. There are various restrictions that cause unwillingness for the public to participate. So, here an important question comes up. What are the best approaches which increase public participation for mitigating environmental problems and enhancing nature-friendly attitudes and behaviors in society while they meet the aims of participatory methods? Some scholars advocate that visualization can improve understanding of the participants about potential plans, and enhance their ability to communicate their knowledge and ideas. In other words, the use of visualization can fulfill the criteria of an engaging participatory approach, fill the gaps between planners and the public, and provide a common language among them. Visualization is a graphical approach for displaying information and can be referred to as any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message. The general procedure of visualization is to turn raw data into visual components. Currently, I am reviewing the application of visualization in some participatory management and decision making at different times, and parts of the world with various stakeholders and planners.