Open Collections

Jerowsky, Micheal

University of British Columbia

There is a long history of using outdoor field trips in the environmental education of children to facilitate the place-based, experiential approaches that are commonly applied in this field. However, the use of virtual and augmented reality has been steadily increasing as these technologies become more available. In this dissertation I conduct a mixed methods case study of classrooms in the Vancouver School District that differ in their walking access to areas of quality green space. I examine the comparative efficacy of these different types of field trips when promoting gains to environmental literacy, environmental attitudes, and connection to nature. Additionally, I explore how these interventions may help overcome barriers to teaching and learning when engaging with critical approaches to environmental education. I provide evidence that access to green space can influence the comparative efficacy of these interventions. However, these findings primarily relate to environmental literacy, as gains to environmental attitudes and connection to nature are minimal in this study. My interviews with students and teachers also found that the use of immersive media can help to overcome barriers related to a lack of access to quality green space. Further, virtual and augmented reality can promote engagement with environmental processes, plants, and animals that may be inaccessible when in the field. Relatedly, they may help to address a lack of environmental expertise among teachers who can use phone applications or embedded videos to support their teaching when providing interpretive nature walks. Finally, virtual and augmented field trips provide an opportunity to foreground the experiences of Indigenous community members or those of volunteers seeking to restore and protect natural areas. I suggest that teachers should integrate virtual, augmented, and outdoor field trips into their environmental education programs by carefully blending these tools based on their efficacy when promoting specific learning objectives or overcoming barriers to teaching and learning about the environment. I also provide a list of recommendations to support the use of these interventions across the Vancouver School District and focus on themes related to increasing access to quality green space, immersive technologies, and new learning materials.

Text

2024-04-19

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87911

Geography

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/