The Cultivation of a Relationship With the Natural World in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

The general objective of this grounded theory multiple-case study was to further apprehend how independent K-12 schools within America foster a connection between children and adolescent students and the natural world through examining the relationship between this connection and (a) the school community (“community connectedness”) and (b) personal sense/belief about spirituality. This study utilized a grounded theory multiple-case study approach to perform secondary data analysis on pre-existing data collected during the original parent study. From this parent study, two schools from the initial cohort of 20 were selected and their data were examined for this grounded theory multiple-case study. Data were primarily collected through school site visits that were one to two days in duration.