Educators’ intentions for learning in Virtual School Garden Exchanges: a comparison with the aims of Education for Sustainable Development

Abstract

It is widely recognized that education plays a key role in addressing current global challenges. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) combines local actions with global thinking. In Virtual School Garden Exchanges (VSGEs) primary and secondary students from the Global South and North interact and communicate digitally about their school gardens. This study focuses on educators’ expectations regarding learning outcomes of VSGEs and possible parallels with ESD and Virtual Exchanges (VEs) in general. A qualitative content analysis of 23 semi-structured interviews with educators engaged in 18 VSGEs was conducted. Even though the VSGEs took different individual approaches, the analysis revealed many commonalities in the respondents’ intentions: amongst other things, educators were aiming to promote knowledge about gardening and food, horticultural and cooperation competencies, and values such as solidarity. Nevertheless, some educators feared that VSGEs might also have some negative effects. The results show parallels with the aims of ESD and VEs.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• School gardens
• virtual exchanges
• Education for Sustainable Development
• learning outcomes
• educators’ perspectives

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the reviewers and my two supervisors Prof. Marcel Robischon and Prof. Marco Rieckmann for their support and constructive feedback; the interviewees for sharing with me their experiences as well as for their time and openness; Nora Lege, Christine Körner and Katharina Niedling for their inspiring perspectives on my data and Isabell Köhler for her help with the transcriptions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Educational Research at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Notes

1 In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was held in Rio de Janeiro. This conference marked the beginning of the official promotion of ESD.

2 School garden partnership, global garden exchange program, school garden linking, and VSGE are all terms used in the field.

3 * translated from German.

4 ** translated from Spanish.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johanna Lochner

Johanna Lochner is PhD student at the Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research interests focus on the integration of the global perspective of Education for Sustainable Development into gardening.