School Gardens as Sites of Emancipatory Learning and Community Justice Action

• In Event: Learning Influences on School and Community Leadership Practices

Abstract

This participatory action research study integrated the voices of one community as we built an emancipatory school garden program. Much research in school gardens investigates predetermined outcomes from a reformist stance toward students and teachers. Rooted in Freire’s (1970) liberation pedagogy, we invited students, teachers, neighbors, university faculty, and partners to discuss and amplify their own hopes, experiences, and vision using PhotoVoice (Wang, 1997) and mapping. Situated in a historically disenfranchised community where redlining and other policies have marginalized residents for decades, rendering the community a food desert (USDA, 2020), the research revealed the ways that the garden can be a transformative and collaborative space within neighborhoods to dismantle systems of inequality and build infrastructure for justice.

Authors

• Colleen Saxen, Wright State University

• Alan Wight, The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences

• Michelle A. Fleming, Wright State University