Connectedness to nature: assessing the impact of garden-based learning on teacher education

Abstract It is well known that the relationship between humans and nature conditions people’s pro-environmental behaviours, as well as being one of the keys to developing sustainability. The focus of this research is whether the use of learning gardens in initial teacher training has an impact on students’ connectedness to nature. The study follows a quasi-experimental design, involving 84 students from the Undergraduate Degree in Early Childhood Education distributed into a control group ( n = 36) and a treatment group ( n = 48). The participants completed two quantitative scales (INS and NEP-R) before and after an educational intervention that took place over a four-month academic period. The findings show that, after instruction, both groups had improved their relationship with nature. Specifically, their environmental concern had increased after the training, but the impact was only significant in the group who used the garden. On the other hand, regarding the self-nature connection, no significant changes were observed in any of the two groups. This strengthens the idea that connectedness to nature is a primitive belief that, although hard to modify in adulthood, can be improved through certain actions. This opens different prospects for the use of learning gardens in the training of pre-service teachers.