Urban adults' engagement in nature education and its interplay with everyday lived experiences: A case study from Shenzhen, China

Abstract Currently, scholarship on education to foster connectedness with nature primarily focuses on children. As adults likewise face the disconnection from nature and play a key role in influencing children, it is important to understand how they perceive, engage in, and benefit from relevant programmes. This epistemological angle advances a fuller assessment of such endeavours' contributions to wider public health and social well‐being. We conducted a case study based on in‐depth interviews with 14 adult volunteer nature instructors in Shenzhen, China, exploring their perceptions, practices, and experiences of nature education. Inductive, thematic analysis of the interviews reveals a dynamic interplay between urban adults' everyday experiences and their involvement in nature education, which is interpreted through a theoretical perspective of everyday urbanism and a relational approach towards nature in everyday life. This study uncovers (1) challenges of engaging urban adults in nature education due to hectic work routines and pragmatic preoccupation with making money; (2) an everyday pedagogy of nature education including principles of provisional learning of ecological knowledge, embodied experiences through multi‐sensory engagement, and routinized interactions with nearby nature; and (3) four dimensions of relational effects (nature, self, others, and the city) arising from everyday engagement in nature education, each contributing to volunteers' subjective well‐being and alleviating an entrenched sense of alienation in urban life. The findings (1) evidence how urban adults may benefit from nature‐based educational programmes in ways that differ from children; (2) highlight the significance of the everyday pedagogy of nature education that counteracts temporal and spatial constraints of urban living to benefit wider audiences; and (3) illuminate the embeddedness of nature education and broader sustainability‐oriented policies and initiatives in everyday urban life. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.