Nurturing children's biophilia

White Hutchinson's children's learning division has published their latest article Nurturing Children's Biophilia, Developmentally Appropriate Environmental Education for Young Children.

Many of our readers may not be familiar with our company’s Children’s Learning Environments division that specializes in the design of children’s learning and play environments, including childcare, kindergarten and child development centers, schools for children with special needs and naturalized playgrounds. That division’s design work is very evidence-based, meaning all our designs are based on extensive research on what environmental characteristics are most effective for children’s development, learning and play. We have been able to transfer that knowledge our company’s other divisions’ work of developing and designing highly successful children’s and family entertainment, edutainment and leisure projects.

As part of our work in the Children’s Learning Environments division, we periodically research and publish articles about children’s learning environments. Many of our articles have been cited as references in books and academic articles.

Our latest article, which was just published on our website, is Nurturing Children’s Biophilia: Developmentally Appropriate Environmental Education for Young Children. Biophilia (i.e. love of living systems), first introduced and popularized by Edward O. Wilson in his 1984 book entitled Biophilia, refers to human’s innate, genetically predisposed tendency to explore and bond with the natural world. However, for biophilia to develop, children must be given developmentally appropriate opportunities to learn about the natural world based on sound principals of child development and learning. Children’s biophilia becomes the foundation for their later positive environmental values and behaviors, now so essential to preservation of the environment. If you are interested in reading the article click html version | PDF version.