By Johanna Trummer, Lucas Weinberg, Jerylee Wilkes-Allemann, Karin Oberauer, and Lars Keller
Young people spend a lot of time at school and on the way there and home. For teenagers growing up in cities, where natural green spaces are limited, school is often one of the main places where they come into contact with nature. In this study, we show that school grounds and their surroundings play an important role in understanding how teenagers see, experience, and understand the natural world.
To explore how young people visually experience nature in these environments, we have worked with 58 students aged 14 to 16 in Austria and Germany. We asked them to walk around their school grounds, take photos of anything they thought represented “nature”, and write a short description to each photo to tell us why they chose this image. We also asked them to complete a short survey. In total, we collected 570 photos and we carefully analysed both the images and their descriptions.
Our findings show that young people perceive nature in many different ways, from small details such as flowers and blossoms to broader scenes such as parks with trees and ponds, recreational areas, and sports fields. Interestingly, those who said nature was not very important to them were more likely to photograph general views rather than close-ups of specific natural elements. Many young people also pointed out human-made objects and infrastructure as part of nature, such as litter, sports fields, or paved paths. This shows that they were aware of both the positive and negative ways people shape the natural environment.
This study highlights that even nature found on school grounds and their surroundings can support young people’s experience with nature. For educators, it is a reminder that schoolgrounds are more than playgrounds; they can serve as spaces for learning and engaging with nature. Encouraging these everyday experiences with nature can help shape how the young generations see and experience the world around them.
Relational Thinking 