Cultural probes for environmental education: Designing learning materials to engage children and teenagers with local biodiversity

Secondly, we assessed the efficacy of the technique in promoting sensory, emotional, and aesthetic experiences in nature-rich environments by looking at the frequency with which par- ticipants, in the final free, open-ended activity, focused their responses on qualities experi- enced during the trail walk (e.g., concerning a specific location, a moment, a feeling, etc.). Finally, we assessed participants’ engagement with a nature-rich environment by analyzing: the observations registered by adult volunteers during the trail walk; the participants’ evalua- tive judgments expressed in the final free, open-ended activity (to assess their degree of moti- vation and satisfaction with the trail walk); and participants’ willingness and motivation to return to the trail. The field guide cultural probe toolkit. Figs 2, 3, 4 and 5 present the FG cultural probe toolkit with signs demarcating station points along the nature trail. Figs 3 and 4 show a cotton canvas bag that was specially designed for the project to contain and transport probe items. We divided the first two kilometers of the trail into 12 demarcated stations and added beginning (Station 1) and endpoints (Station 14) to provide an opportunity to understand par- ticipants’ impressions of the surrounding environment. At the beginning of the trail, partici- pants were invited to perform a free-word association exercise in response to a given sentence; at the end, participants were asked to briefly close their eyes for a moment and then write

down any words that came to mind (Table 2). In line with Thoring et al. [22], we designed both beginning and end stations for documentation, inspiration and motivation. Stations 2 to 13 bore a title expressed with a single word or short phrase (Table 2, in bold). As in Gaver et al. [19, 21], we intentionally thought of creating signage as a means of defining specific locations on the trail and eliciting curiosity, therefore aligning with Thoring et al. [22] with respect to the of capacity CP to inspire participants. In each station participants were asked to engage with a specific activity designed to both inspire interaction with nature and instruct on the activity itself. As shown in Fig 4, the toolkit bag contained practical items, such as an A5 clipboard, three pencils, an envelope with a pencil sharpener and an eraser, a cord for completing the ’Create your park’ activity, and a trash bag for the ’Help the forest’ activity. We provided activity sheets for each station to document participants’ responses to activities when relevant, and to inspire interaction with the surrounding environment. We also included one mobile phone per group with a protective pouch to document the ’Create your park’, ’Who lives here?’ and ’Lime- Green-Bud-Green’ activities. A set of wooden tokens (Fig 5) featuring the content-free ques- tions served the purpose of motivating participants to ask questions and instructing them on possible types of questions. In line with the inquiry-based educational literature that emphasizes the positive benefits of

devising support strategies for question-based learning [37], we designed nine medium-den- sity tokens, laser-printed on fiberboard (Fig 5) and etched with a content-free question (Table 3). Our intention was to facilitate the formulation of participant questions through con- tent free questions. Nine of the 10 content-free questions draw on King [38], as translated to Portuguese. However, we excluded one of King’s questions—"How does . . . tie in with . . .. that we learned before", given the lack of a formal learning activity prior to the visiting the trail. Participants also had access to an additional question sheet for each station, except for the start and endpoints. With this sheet, we hoped to document the questions formulated by participat- ing groups with the help of the tokens. While we employed an IBL strategy in the design of question tokens, the toolkit was designed to explicitly evoke sensory experiences by inviting participants to attune their senses to nature through sensation such as touch, feel, squeeze, smell, and hear, as indicated in Activi- ties 2, 3, 8, and 11 (Table 2). With respect to emotion, station titles, such as ’Help the forest’, were intended to elicit in participants a sense of care for nature. Instructions asking PLOS ONE Cultural probes for environmental education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262853 February 10, 2022 8 / 30