Boosting biodiversity in school grounds: a theory of change

Abstract

The National Education Nature Park aims to involve every nursery, school, and college in England in enhancing the biodiversity on their site, whilst supporting young people’s wellbeing, pro-environmental behaviours, and green skills. Young people gather environmental data using citizen science research, and then through collaboration and collective decision-making, they design and implement their own nature recovery actions. But will this participation in community and citizen science lead to behaviour change and environmental action, and how can we build participants’ sense of agency to take environmental action through our programme? Here, we present our Theory of Change for the Nature Park and the design features of the programme that connect participation in citizen science with achieving two crucial types of change - environmental change in the form of biodiversity gain, and the behaviour change that underpins it.