This paper presents findings from a research study exploring the effectiveness of three environmental education programs. The first was an interpretive program where visitors learned to safely interact with and 'pet' bees (control group), the second was the same interpretive program with the addition of post-visit action resources (interactive…

This article highlights three key features that appeared to add value to young people's experience of a school-linked environmental education initiative built around conservation activities. The three features -- close-up encounters with other species, working with external experts, and a degree of informality -- were identified through a…

This article details the approach taken to a recent study in an environmental education context, with a focus on the writing and analysis of ethnographic fieldnotes. This approach drew upon aspects of new materialist theory and multi-species ethnography for the writing of fieldnotes, and Situational Analysis for their analysis. These approaches…

We conducted interviews with 16 postsecondary students at a large public university on pollination systems knowledge. A semi-structured interview protocol was developed with open-ended prompts to elicit student explanations of pollination systems. Congruent themes were developed through coding of the interview transcripts into low, medium, and…

The concept of emotional affinity and connection with nature using the term of "biophilia" along with its counter-part "biophobia" has been merely researched in the area of environmental education. In this study, it was hypothesized that children's negative emotions (biophobia) such as fear towards insects can be changed into…

Classroom pet programs have become extremely popular in urban North American early childhood classrooms. This article challenges anthropocentric child-pet pedagogies by proposing common world pedagogies of "staying with the trouble." Drawing from a common world multispecies ethnography in one early childhood centre, the authors engage…

Using a case study of London Zoo's BUGS (Biodiversity Underpinning Global Survival) exhibit, this article assesses the role of experiential learning in raising biodiversity knowledge, concern and potential pro-conservation actions. Using Personal Meaning Mindmapping, a novel method in visitor research, the study examines how adult visitors relate…