Fostering Connection to People, Place, and Self through Field Biology Learning Experiences
Lalitha Balachandran, Haider Ali Bhatti, Paige V Kouba, Lina Arcila Hernández, Abraham Borker, Daniella Scalice, Taormina Lepore, David Esparza, Laura Reilly-Sanchez, Michelle Smith, Danielle Ignace, Clarisse Hart, Nia Holley, Holly White, Alison Jolley, Holly Cho, Kari O’Connell, Stephanie Shaulskiy, Erika Zavaleta, Roxanne S BeltranAbstract
In an era where networks of connection continue to expand while the depth and quality of those connections seemingly diminish, field-based learning offers a setting uniquely suited to support more meaningful connections. This piece synthesizes the perspectives of biology education researchers who convened at the 2025 Ecological Society of America Conference for an Organized Oral Session entitled “Inclusive teaching practices for more equitable field-based learning.” As a product of that session and the discussion it generated, we center connection as a design aim, one that links the pedagogical choices instructors make to the experiences students have in the field and beyond. We present a series of guiding pedagogical principles crafted to cultivate connection across three interrelated areas: students’ connection to people and culture, connection to place and the natural world, and connection to self (one’s identity and one’s relationship to learning). These pedagogical principles are informed by the primary, secondary, and higher (K-16) educational assessment research presented at the session, the authors' experiences designing, teaching, and evaluating field learning experiences, and relevant discipline-based education research. We argue for the importance of designing inclusive field learning experiences with the intention to foster these types of connections as a means to support student engagement, success, and learning in the field.