Authors: Murmylo Yulia
Abstract: Children's happiness” is the principal vector of any society and the foundation on which the Sustainable Development Goals rest today, tomorrow and for the next generation. This multidimensional term encompasses complex components, without each of which it remains incomplete. We examine the interrelation between the phenomenon of children's happiness and nature-based practices (in the context of an environment in which, through neurobiological, sensory and interpersonal mechanisms, qualitative changes take place in the child's personality, emotional repertoire, cognitive strategies and immune profile). We review existing methodologies, the international studies that have been conducted on this topic, and their results, and draw a conclusion about the most effective practices contributing to the enhancement of children's happiness. This article is unique in that it identifies a set of aspects of children's well-being, presents concrete methodologies for analysing this multifaceted concept, lays out natural factors of influence, summarises a research base on the impact of nature on the younger generation across individual components, and describes working programmes that demonstrate the action of the natural environment on children as transformative. The author argues that, from the standpoint of sustainable development, nature-oriented programmes possess a unique property: they are simultaneously a tool for achieving goals (improving children's health and well-being) and a means of forming agents of sustainable development in the next generation. Adapting the principles of the Stanford course “Interpersonal Dynamics” to nature-based programmes for children opens up the possibility of creating a new class of pedagogical products.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20341762
