Our Changing Planet and Ourselves: Why Nature Connection Might Be the Missing Link in Science Education

"A moth will never know what a zebra finch hears in its song, a zebra finch will never feel the electric buzz of a black ghost knifefish, a knifefish will never see through the eyes of a mantis shrimp, a mantis shrimp will never smell the way a dog can, and a dog will never understand what it is to be a bat. We will never fully do any of these things either, but we are the only animal that can try." – Ed Yong, An Immense World (2022)

When was the last time you watched a group of students go quiet?

Not the compliance kind of quiet. The absorbed kind. The kind that happens when a class stands still long enough to notice the iridescent blue sheen that flashes across a little penguin’s back or the rivets, folds, and hairs of an elephant’s cheek.

Something shifts in those moments, and it is not just attention.

For decades, science education has rightly focused on the content we are required to teach. We look at ecosystems, climate systems, biodiversity loss, and adaptation. We explain the carbon cycle, we model food webs, we might even explore anthropogenic change. Yet alongside this intellectual understanding, another question hums quietly in the background.

Do students feel like players in the system they are studying? Or, as our animal behaviour specialist Nic “Nicibird” Bishop likes to say:

“do they feel a part of nature or apart from nature?”

The concept of ‘nature connectedness’, defined as our sense of our role in nature rather than simply our time spent in it, offers a compelling lens here. Researchers have shown consistent links between ‘strong nature connectedness’ and positive wellbeing, reduced symptoms associated with anxiety and depression and as a protective factor for young people’s mental health (Capaldi et. al., 2014, Keenan et. al, 2021, Piccininni et al., 2018, Pritchard et. al., 2020). More astonishingly, emerging research is suggesting that young people’s relationship to nature is a better indicator of their current wellbeing than other predictive tools like socio-economic status (Martin et. al., 2020).

At the same time many teachers quietly wrestle with a tension. How do we make curriculum content (climate change, habitat fragmentation, species adaptation) real without overwhelming students? How do we address the need for relational learning without erupting into debates about plastic straws and politics? And more importantly for many of you, how do we explore a changing planet without increasing hopelessness?

Nature connection offers a different entry point. When students feel connected to the living world, relevance is no longer manufactured, it is inherent. The research tells us that nature connectedness not only strengthens wellbeing, it predicts pro-environmental action (Anderson & Krettenauer, 2021, Richardson et. al., 2020). Students who feel part of nature are more likely to act in its defence (a big win for teachers looking to spend less of their lunch break asking students to pick up their rubbish).

This shift from fear to connection mirrors a broader change in conservation itself. Campaigns have increasingly moved away from messages of loss and toward messages of love. It is our memories of connection, of awe, of encounter, of recognition, that make us want to protect what is at risk.

At Zoos SA, this question has shaped the evolution of our Wild Learning programs. As a not-for-profit conservation charity, our purpose is to connect people with nature and save species from extinction.

Our new cross-site Adaptations program, delivered in partnership with Adelaide Botanic Garden and State Herbarium, is one example. Students investigate plant adaptations across rainforest, arid and aquatic biomes before examining animal adaptations at the zoo. By moving between two sites, they see adaptation not as an isolated biological curiosity but as a unifying ecological principle across kingdoms.

By contrast, our new Wild Walks programs are deliberately slower, inquiry-driven experiences designed to move beyond the ‘for entertainment’ zoo visit toward something more reflective and reflexive. Students explore Adelaide Zoo with one of our educators, and the tour is structured around observation, questioning, and noticing. We invite students to consider not only what they see, but what this means. Looking inside habitats and living ecosystems, we can see examples of how organisms survive and thrive within a changing world.

How special that only a mere metre from a row of little feet gathered along the water’s edge, we can see convergent evolution in the torpedo shape of a little penguin, echoing the streamlined bodies of fish and marine mammals.

And we pause.

In those pauses, something powerful happens. Those same students glance down at their own feet, noticing the bones that flex, the tendons that store energy, the shared architecture of movement that binds us to the animals we observe. Students begin to see animals not as isolated exhibits but as participants in complex, dynamic systems that include us. When we examine adaptation, we are not merely listing traits. We are exploring evolutionary responses to environmental pressures.

In a world that often encourages speed, Wild Walks intentionally cultivate attentiveness. This attentiveness to nature increases nature connectedness. Connectedness, in turn, strengthens wellbeing and conservation intent. The circle begins to close.

This is the quiet revolution that we are working towards at Zoos SA.

In Western societies, we have long positioned ourselves as observers of nature, sometimes even as its managers. What if science and nature education could gently disrupt that narrative? What if, alongside data literacy and experimental design, we cultivated relational literacy?

Because students who feel separate from nature may understand climate change and species loss. But students who feel part of nature are more likely to care and act, and astonishingly, feel hope.

When a group of students stands quietly watching an animal, there is often a flicker of recognition. Not just of difference, but of kinship. Fur, feather, scale, skin.

Perhaps science education on a changing planet requires both precision and presence, content and care.

Perhaps the most powerful learning begins not with a worksheet, but with a moment of stillness and recognition.

And finally, perhaps it is in that quiet moment of observation and connection where change truly starts.