A Sustainable Framework for Learning

A report about the role of The Garden Project in shaping a new paradigm for sustainable learning

Contents

Introduction

200 years ago, there were less than one billion humans living on our planet. Today, according to UN calculations, there are over 7 billion of us, with 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050 (United Nations, 2018). Children today spend 50% less time playing outside compared to their parents a generation ago*, with the risk of failing to develop positive, caring attitudes towards the environment. This, together with our excessive interference with the planet’s biospheric systems, is putting tremendous pressure on our natural resources and our need to act on Social, Economic and Education Reforms.

Governments are starting to realize the pivotal role that education could play in the peaceful empowerment of its people and the survival of our species on the planet. For example, in November 2019 former Italian education minister Lorenzo Fioramonti** issued a statement declaring that all schools in Italy should incorporate at least one hour a week to study issues linked to climate change, with the intent of putting the environment and society at the core of learning in schools. Environmental education is being recognized as a key factor in creating awareness, concern, and recognition of the consequences of people’s actions on the environment.

These benefits however, may not be realized if such education is not introduced in the Early Years (Wilson, 1992), during a child’s most critical age of development. Moreover, resources and training materials have not kept up to pace, leaving elementary and preschool teachers particularly feeling inadequate in their presentation of environmental content to students, as these teachers generally don’t have a specialization in scientific subjects.

2.3 Garden in the Box: A Tool that Breaks Down External Barriers

We know that gardening and environmental education provide authentic experiences that contribute to student understanding of a range of topics, however, its implementation at school can be hindered by a teacher’s inability to adapt his or her knowledge in a different setting, i.e. from the traditional classroom to an outdoor setting (Dyment, 2005).

Teacher competency aside, teachers are often faced with the lack of availability of physical resources (a site for the garden) and funding for the space (DeMarco et al., 1999), often aggravated by the time constraint caused by a loss of focus and purpose of students shifting from a classroom to a garden setting.

To overcome these constraints, The Garden Project makes use of the Garden in the Box as its primary instructional medium. Students create a small edible garden by transforming a small box (30cm x 20cm x 20cm) into a vegetable garden box, made up of vegetables and herb seedlings. By bringing the garden into the classroom, teachers are able to better manage their time, reduce their costs and take full responsibility of the garden, which we know from DeMarco’s study are the contributing factors to a successful integration of gardening in the curriculum.

Concluding Remarks

Humanity has reached a turning point. We can no longer afford to wait to make a change in the midst the environmental, economic and geopolitical crises we are faced with. Action must be taken quickly and immediately, at all levels.

Instruction is becoming irrelevant to today’s children, and Education Reform must happen now if we want to restore our student’s trust in our system. After all, what could be more urgent than putting sustainability at the heart of our educational system? Our entire species depends on it.

This intervention needs to start at the Early Childhood level, as Ruth Wilson rightly pointed out more than 25 years ago:

“Environmental education at the early childhood level has the potential for greatly enhancing the development of the young child as it fosters an appreciation of beauty and diversity and fosters growth in all the developmental domains (i.e., physical, mental, social, emotional, and spiritual). Involvement with the natural environment stimulates the senses, fosters observational and critical thinking skills, provides innumerable topics for conversation, invites physical manipulation, and stimulates the imagination and sense of wonder... Environmental education at the early childhood level has the potential for developing an environmentally concerned citizenry that will relate to the earth in a more harmonious way than that of the present generation.” (p. 23-24)

Today, The Garden Project plays a major role in shaping a new paradigm for learning. With its simple formula, teachers are provided with a framework – cognitive roadmap – to use nature as an instructional medium that can easily be adapted for local and cultural nuances, overcoming the scarcity in resources in education for sustainability for this age group. Through nature, children are faced with the complexities and unexpected that nature has to offer, providing learners with opportunities to engage with and create bridges across a range of concepts and ideas.

Thanks to its complete program, The Garden Project creates opportunities for sharing and experiencing concepts in science, technology, engineering, arts and math, resulting in children developing their skillset holistically in all learning domains. Its developmentally appropriate framework, stages an inquiry model to learning from Wonder, to Observation to Investigation, mimicking nature’s cyclicality beautifully, in a harmoniously sustainable framework for learning. Its versatility, in its use as a Science CLIL program, means that it is

a precious resource even when not translated into a student’s native language, as it can be used as a curriculum to teach science in English.

Its use of perishable and organic material means that teachers and children see nature as a valuable resource that is readily available to them, regardless of their geography and/or social status, and in the process minimize waste from the purchase of big, expensive and/ or unsustainable school resources.

This tangible, hands-on framework, provides a shift to a cyclical mindset, where nothing gets disposed of. The very product of learning, seeds, become the foundation for subsequent years, and a learning resource for future classrooms to come.

As our planet’s future ambassadors, children will grow to be the decision makers of the future. Giving children a sense of ownership, by tending to the growth of their food, will give them the direction and energy they need to support their sustainable choices that lead to positive futures for nature and future generations to come.