Youth Development Insight

By Cathy Jordan Fueled by Richard Louv’s popular book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder , and supported by the organization Children & Nature Network, (which Louv and several others co-founded in 2006) a worldwide movement has been gaining traction to reconnect children to the natural environment. More and more research is being published suggesting that nature play and nature-based learning provide children with benefits across the age range and across diverse developmental areas including: physical health, mental health, learning, motor development, cognitive development, and social-emotional learning. However, there is a lot more we need to know, particularly about the questions of what works, for whom, how, and under what circumstances. Answering these questions will inform the practice of educators, educational administrators, youth workers, youth program developers, policy makers, planners, and designers, among others. I have t...

A major political strategy to address educational disparities has been to raise the aspirations of young people with a low socioeconomic status (SES). Case in point: This entertaining video features a rapping FLOTUS encouraging youth to "go to college". I don't dispute the core message -- that going to college is a way to discover one's intrinsic value and professional opportunities, and yes, young people should go to college. But two key assumptions implicit in this video (and in many U.S. initiatives to address educational inequities) are just plain wrong.

By Kate Walker While we often talk about "bridging research and practice," too often that bridge is a one-way street aimed at getting practitioners to recognize and use the research being conducted. But if we want more research-based practice, we need to engage in more practice-based research. We need more  research aimed at understanding effective practice from the practitioners' perspective , as they experience and enact it. We need research that is wholly committed to generating useful information that can inform and improve daily practice.