Effects of Occasional Visits to Botanical Gardens on the Attitude to Nature in Primary Schoolchildren in Russian Arctic

Abstract

The relevance of exploring the ways to impact the Russian Arctic schoolchildren’s attitudes towards nature is explained by the contradictions between the obvious social significance of this issue (and at the same time its wide application possibilities) and the lack of Russian researchers interested in it. Our hypothesis was that occasional visits to botanical gardens can have a significant impact on the development of personal attitudes towards nature in primary schoolchildren of the Russian Arctic. The aim of this study was to identify the specifics of environmental attitudes in a group of primary school students of the Russian Arctic region and to evaluate the impact of occasional visits to the botanical garden on these attitudes. The study involved 60 students of 2-4 grades of secondary schools of the Murmansk region and was conducted using the technique by S.D. Deryabo and V.A. Yasvin "AESOP" (Emotions, Knowledge, Protection, Benefit) on the basis of the Polar-Alpine Botanical Garden of the the N.A. Avrorin Institute of the Kola Research Center, Russian Academy of Sciences. The outcomes of the study show that primary school children living in the Russian Arctic, just like their peers from other regions, generally perceive nature as an aesthetic object. However, their perception of nature tends to have a decreased cognitive component (‘Knowledge’). We conclude that occasional visits to botanical gardens that engage children in a specially organized cognitive activity can be considered significant only in terms of the pragmatic component (‘Benefit’) of the environmental attitude.