ERIC Number: EJ1076399
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jul
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0814-0626
EISSN: N/A
The Force of Gardening: Investigating Children's Learning in a Food Garden
Green, Monica; Duhn, Iris
Australian Journal of Environmental Education, v31 n1 p60-73 Jul 2015
School gardens are becoming increasingly recognised as important sites for learning and for bringing children into relationship with food. Despite the well-known educational and health benefits of gardening, children's interactions with the non-human entities and forces within garden surroundings are less understood and examined in the wider garden literature. Using a relational materialist approach (Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010) that considers the material artefacts that constitute a learning environment, this article examines children's interactions with the animate and inanimate life forces through three specific garden photographs. The photos belong to data derived from a study that examined food, ecology and design pedagogies in three Australian primary schools. This paper argues that children's interactions with the non-human materialities of a garden are a vital dimension of gardening practice. The agential powers of gardens have great capacity to mobilise and inform children's inhabitation of food gardens.
Descriptors: Gardening, Teaching Methods, Photography, Food, Ecology, Elementary School Students, Foreign Countries, Interaction
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Australia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A