Underlying Epistemologies in the School Garden: What Educators Know and What They Teach

• In Event: Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: Food Communities, Garden Communities: Underlying Lessons, Limits, and Liminality

Abstract

School gardens have been proposed as a means to teach about complex ecological systems and are being embraced as opportunities for student exposure to nature, nutrition education, and science content. However, many analyses of the benefits of school gardens have often focused on notions of human well-being and do not take into account the underlying movements and messages both driving and being perpetuated via discourse and pedagogy in school gardens. This study examines the epistemological stances and situated pedagogical practices of garden educators against the backdrop of science education and school gardens.

Author

• Megan C. McGinty, University of Washington - Seattle