This photo was taken by Zhihui Yue in April 2021, was executed following the explicit verbal authorization provided by both the class teacher and the participating students.
By Zhihui Yue, Yichuan Meng, and Jin Chen.
In various environmental education initiatives, the concept of “nature” is often discussed, raising questions about its precise meaning and how children refer the natural world. These questions are important because our understanding of nature can influence our attitudes and actions toward the environment. However, grasping how preadolescents represent their natural environment is challenging, especially among preadolescents who may have limited verbal narrative abilities. Therefore, this study aimed to develop and use a tool to measure how individual and environmental factors influence on natural representations in preadolescent children in China.
We conducted a draw-writing task and questionnaire survey with 1,830 preadolescents (aged 9-12) in three regions of China, chosen to represent different levels of urbanization and biodiversity. By analyzing the children’s drawings qualitatively and rating them quantitatively, we found that preadolescents have a nuanced understanding of nature. Their drawings depict a wide range of living and non-living elements, sometimes including humans. The representations of nature by preadolescents varied in terms of wildness, cognitive complexity, degree of elaboration, expression of emotion, and artistic style.
Our study highlights the importance of the surrounding environment and natural experiences, particularly vicarious nature experiences, in shaping how preadolescents represent nature. We also suggest that the draw-writing task is a promising approach for understanding children’s representations of nature.
Relational Thinking 