Critical-Thinking and Decision-Making
Let’s talk decisions.
How comfortable do you feel making decisions in critical situations? How confident do you feel in knowing right from wrong or pro from con? How often have you wondered if this cognitive ability could have been improved based on your interaction with planted wildlife in your childhood?
Probably not nearly as much as I do.
Generation by generation, children have stopped playing in forests or watching birds in their backyard or making dirt castles out of the flowerbed. Has this done anything other than keep the nailbeds of our youth clean? Maybe! There are plenty of speculations that the rise of technology and the amount we depend on it has removed children from environments that promote healthier brain development and – even worse – increase appearance of certain disabilities like ADHD.
(right; alternative cover for Environmental Education Research journal)
One study completed among Florida high schools presented the impacts of environment-based learning on critical thinking and decision-making skills. They accomplished this through pre-and-post tests, also accounting for covariates that could influence a students’ perspective. This study acknowledged that many other works focus on immediate results as opposed to long-term acquired skills, skills constructive for future learning. With the rapid increase of available knowledge in this technical world we live in, it is imperative that development of our critical thinking skills improves just as quickly. In this realm, and this study, they capitalized on an UNESCO statement claiming that environmental education does not teach particular solutions or actions, but instead facilitates a student's ability to draw on and synthesize knowledge to solve problems. This work was unique and complex in the sense that it identified external impacts of differing variables, and attempted to mitigate this issue by selecting diverse test groups. Ages ranged from those that were finishing their last year of high school (measuring short-term exposure impact) and groups that continued through the entirety of their high school education (measuring longer-term exposure impact). Although no test is perfect, until examined in each different demographic and geographic location, this study focused on subjects that encapsulate every area of our educational ability.
- With better critical-thinking skills, we could subjectively do better on testing and grade achievement by engaging new approaches to comprehension.
- With better critical-thinking skills, we could analyze our food choices and their impacts on larger systems, not just our direct well-being.
Studies such as Ernst and Monroe’s may not be perfect, but they present a promising framework that is working towards larger issues connected to the educational impact the environment can have on our younger generations.
If focusing on roots of situations and encouraging new solutions is how we want to set our students up for success, then perhaps we have discovered that success is an abstract term that is better served by subjectivity.
Ernst, Julie Athman, and Martha Monroe. “The Effects of Environment‐Based Education on Students' Critical Thinking Skills and Disposition toward Critical Thinking.” Environmental Education Research, vol. 10, no. 4, 2004, pp. 507–522.