Growing garden-based learning: mapping practical and theoretical work through design

Abstract

Echoing calls to expand environmental education research through design, this study explores the role of design in garden-based education and illustrate its contributions towards practical impact and theoretical insight. Design can explicate and map conjectures about resources, tasks, roles, and other supports for learning and teaching then, in turn, can be teste to illuminate how these supports operate together. Design, as such, focuses holistically on examining systems of activity. To these ends, case study method organizes analysis of garden-based learning in a US fifth-grade classroom (ages 10–11) that enacted a project-based gardening curriculum. Findings develop threes themes about designed supports: relating content and context; aligning curricula and gardens; and designing for curiosity and wonder. Discussion considers the role design plays in organizing, enhancing, and ultimately growing garden-based learning as well teaching and learning in environmental education more broadly.

Keywords:

• Design-based research
• garden-based learning
• case study

Acknowledgements

We remain grateful to the teacher and students who welcomed us into their classroom community and to colleagues and thought partners who supported these efforts, including Michelle Jordan, Sallie Marston, Eileen Merritt, Priyanka Parekh, Lori Talarico, Wendy Wakefield, Andrea Weingard, and Kyle Wright.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation under grant 1908886.

Notes on contributors

Steven J. Zuiker

Dr. Steven Zuiker is a learning scientist in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. His research is broadly based on the notion that ideas are only as important as what we can do with them. Learning environments, like school gardens and video games, as well as research findings, like scholarly journal articles, can each be both useful and used to create value in scholarly, educational, and local communities. Dr. Zuiker’s research agenda explores how to design activities, resources, and projects that interconnect classrooms and schoolyards, digital video games and real-world activities, and ultimately, educational research and educational practice.

Amanda K. Riske

Amanda Riske is a math educator in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on in-service education for K-12 mathematics teachers on statistical literacy, specifically designing professional development that supports statistics, data analysis, and decision making for citizenship and social justice. Prior to beginning her graduate work in Learning, Literacies, and Technologies at ASU, Amanda was an international secondary mathematics teacher in Norway, Germany, China, and Washington, D.C., and developed a curriculum for a traveling school. She holds a BA in Secondary Education Mathematics from Arizona State University and an MPhil in Comparative International Education from the University of Oslo, Norway.