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Planting an Interest in STEM Outdoors
December 29, 2023
Open-ended loose parts and inspiration that nature provides enhance the freedom and opportunities for children’s inventiveness to flourish.
-Christine Kiewra and Ellen Veselack
-Christine Kiewra and Ellen Veselack
“Anything we can do to help get kids to see science and STEM as things that are useful to them and things they can interact with and they can do, or recognize things around them in the world that are happening — that’s going to be really valuable,” said Indiana University professor Adam Maltese in a story from the Hechinger Report. Maltese co-authored a 2017 study which found most respondents became interested in STEM prior to sixth grade.
The study also found that, “after an innate interest in science, women in STEM-related fields were more likely to point to playing or spending time outdoors as the spark for their initial interest in STEM than other activities.”
The outdoors offers natural opportunities to explore most facets of science and engineering, especially when children have access to a variety of ‘loose parts’ both large and small that they can explore and manipulate. Gardening also invites direct connection with scientific and mathematical concepts.
According to a 2019 survey of 279 natural outdoor classrooms, “Natural outdoor classrooms have the added benefits of improved acoustics, generous space for movement, beautiful but not overwhelming visual stimuli, and abundant materials that enhance opportunities for children to make choices and exert their will.”
The report identified these positive outcomes in nature-rich spaces that “(1) maximized choices, (2) provided many distinct spaces, especially child-sized ones, (3) embedded play affordances within pathways and borders, (4) encouraged spatial evolution, and (5) supported ongoing stakeholder engagement.”
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsEugene, OR, United States
Beautiful, Deborah! Yes, a more holistic approach for sure.
Growing Wonder
Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Thank you for this research. I am currently writing articles and making presentations for a variety of conferences on the integration of subjects such as Love, Loose Parts, and spiritual flourishing. All have a relationship to STEM, STEAM, and a definition of STREAMS that emerged from my research on children's spirituality. In my mind, STREAMS is more complete than either STEM or STEAM...all are important but STREAMS offers space for human interaction where the R represents respect, relationships, resiliency, etc. and the final S represents deep personal feelings stimulated by moments of wonder, awe, joy, big questions, etc..There is so much more to talk about. Great topic. Thanks again!
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