Puzzle Pieces but Not the Big Picture—How Students from a Green School Perceive the Environmental Crisis from Teachers' Point of View.

This article examines the environmental perspectives of fourth-grade students at a Green School (GS) that employs a place-based education (PBE) approach through experiential outdoor learning, focusing on how these students relate local natural phenomena—a fire and a flood at a nearby stream—to the global environmental crisis. Using qualitative analysis of student drawings and explanations, the study found that students predominantly viewed these events as isolated local occurrences and maintained an anthropocentric perspective, showing limited ability to connect them to broader national or global environmental issues. The findings suggest that despite the GS's emphasis on linking local and global environmental concerns, fourth graders' cognitive development and emotional responses may limit their holistic understanding of the environmental crisis. The study recommends that educators reconsider how the concept of the environmental crisis is introduced, possibly using analogies like assembling a puzzle to help students integrate local experiences into a wider environmental context.