More Work on my Inquiry Project

Today I figured out that what I thought were issues in my LaTeX annotated bibliography are in fact features. So that's good!

One of the authors I came across in my literature review is Oksana Bartosh, one of my current curriculum professors. I'm hopeful that she will be able to meet with me and provide some insight into educational research and her findings on outdoor education, specifically learning gardens.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there will be time to actually bring the class outside, but that would be ideal. Since I'm going first in the day, Patrick and Annabelle suggested that the class meet outside and I do my activity first. I'm still worried it won't be quick enough since I only have 15 minutes. I'll keep thinking about it. If not, I will find a way to bring the outdoors in! :)

Annotated Bibliography for Inquiry 1

 Here is my annotated bibliography for my inquiry 1 project.

Working on the Annotated Bibliography (Exit 9)

Today was a bit of a distracted effort, caused by some other more pressing items on my to-do list. I spent too long doing that in too much detail at the beginning of today's work session. Once I got going on the annotated bibliography I made a bit of progress. I found one really good article that is quite recent, and I think it will form a sort of focal point for my research. I started to explore two suggestions from my professor Susan Gerofsky; Dilafruz Williams and Jolie Mayer-Smith and found some interesting projects of theirs. They seem to be focused on specific aspects that are not exactly my focus, but I will see if I can find something more general, perhaps from their earlier work. Also, the results are still quite general and I think can be applied to my interests.

Edited to acknowledge the input of Susan Gerofsky.

Flushing Out My Inquiry Topic (Exit 8)

Especially in cities, kids are being exposed to natural environments far less than they used to be (needs citation). Part of my thesis is my opinion (for now) that this creates three main effects. Children exposed less to natural environments 1) have a lesser sense of environmental stewardship and care for the natural world, 2) have worse academic outcomes in terms of both understanding and grades, and 3) have worse emotional regulation which results in more difficult classroom management for teachers. These ideas need some significant form of backing up, but I believe them to be true.

With this in mind, I would like to determine whether we can use outdoor education and exposure to natural environments to improve all three of these aspects of children's and teacher's lives. Environmental stewardship is a part of the curriculum in science in some way (needs citation) and is a part of the First People's Principles of Learning (needs citation). Not only that, but in the face of climate crisis we all need to have some sense of social responsibility to the Earth.

Starting my lit review I'm first focusing on the emotional regulation side of things. I made a search for "outdoor education and emotional regulation". It seems the literature talks more about emotional intelligence and adaptation and mental health and well-being, which might be an interesting slight change to my tiopic.