School Gardens: A Qualitative Study on Implementation Practices
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants
2.2. Materials
2.3. Procedure
2.4. Ethical Statement
2.5. Data Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Implementation Practices
3.1.1. Goals
3.1.2. Characteristics of the Garden
3.1.3. Organization of the Garden
3.1.4. Staffing
3.2. Perceptions on School Gardening
3.2.1. Perceived Effects
3.2.2. General Perceptions
4. Discussion
4.1. Implications for Practice
4.2. Limitations
5. Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Author Contributions
Conflicts of Interest
References
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School 1 | School 2 | School 3 | School 4 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Location of school in Ghent | City center | Suburban region | Suburban region | City center |
Number of children in 5th to 6th grade | 16 | 75 | 61 | 194 |
Number of teachers in 5th to 6th grade | 6 | 5 | 6 | 20 |
Participating children | 2 focus groups: one with 7 children and one with 9 children | 1 focus group with 6 children | 1 focus group with 8 children | 1 focus group with 8 children |
Participating key members | 2 teachers and 1 responsible person (parent) | 4 teachers | 2 teachers and 1 responsible person | 3 teachers and the headmaster |
Theme | Questions for Children | Questions for Key Members |
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Contextual information on the school garden and perceptions on implementation |
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Perceived effects of a school garden |
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Attitudes towards the school garden and the development of school garden projects |
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Ending |
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Theme | Quote |
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Implementation Practices | |
Goals | Teacher: “In the school garden we try to teach the children the growth process of vegetables, taking care of plants, and we also focus on the origin of plants, as children often lack knowledge on this”. Teacher: “We do not really focus on this goal (encouraging children to eat vegetables), but I think we indeed have to focus more on the fact that you can eat your own vegetables and you can even cook with them”. |
Perceived effects | Teacher: “My own children go to this school and my oldest son tells me that he is interested in gardening and I must admit that everything the teachers tells lingers”. Child: “We learn what plants need to survive, how they grow and that they are all different”. Teacher: “If they (the children) grew it (vegetables) themselves and they saw it growing, they are motivated to taste and eat it”. Teacher: “Working with the school garden will not make a lot of difference as we don’t involve the parents. It is necessary that at home there’s a positive attitude towards vegetables”. Child: “I do eat more vegetables. I trust the fresh vegetables more than vegetables that came a long way to the shop”. |
Characteristics of the garden | Teacher: “We subscribed to the contest of “Watch them grow” and we got a starters pack: a planter of 1 m2 and lots of information and movies”. |
Organization of the garden | Teacher: “Starting a school garden was an idea of a colleague. We were looking for something to do within our Environmental Care at School-project, to plant and sow with children”. Teacher: “I’ve got information from videos, but to have a good growth process of the plants, it is necessary to have some experience in gardening or that you search lots of information”. Teacher: “The maintenance of the school garden and sowing some more plants was done at lunch break, once a week, with a parent”. Teacher: “Sometimes it occurs in a theme of the subject ‘world orientation’, but if you (as teacher) work very method bound, it is very difficult to integrate the fruit and vegetables theme”. Teacher: “We ensure that we adapt our crops so that few are ripe in summer holidays and sometimes there are people coming to weed or to water the plants when it is very dry”. Responsible person: “I e-mail teachers to announce what is ready to use and then they see if they can fit it in their schedule, and they compromise on who harvests which plants and who uses them”. |
Staffing considerations | Teacher: “It is important that there is a person who stimulates the whole process, who says: “Now it is time to do this and ‘that’ person is going to do it…””. |
Perceptions on School Gardening | |
Positive attitudes of key members | Teacher: “It is fun and I think it is feasible. This is perfect and we actually had a good harvest from those planters”. |
Barriers of key members | Teacher: “A lot of teachers are not keen to do it (=working together with the children in the garden), because it is seen as a burden and because they need to maintain it over the year”. Teacher: “We have a relatively small area within the school with a lot of children, so it’s not easy to make space for more greenery”. |
Positive attitudes of children | Child: “I think it was nice to do something new and something different during class than what we otherwise do”. Child: “I don’t think we need gloves for those few things because it is nice to have your bare hands… Yeah, get dirty”. |
Barriers of children | Child: “If there is not a lot of work, I don’t really like it”. Child: “When it’s cold or it rains, I like to be inside instead of being outside in the cold”. Child: “Most of the time, the plants are already broken-down because of the toddlers who pull them out, yes, they damage it”. |
© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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Huys, N.; De Cocker, K.; De Craemer, M.; Roesbeke, M.; Cardon, G.; De Lepeleere, S. School Gardens: A Qualitative Study on Implementation Practices. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2017, 14, 1454. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121454
Huys N, De Cocker K, De Craemer M, Roesbeke M, Cardon G, De Lepeleere S. School Gardens: A Qualitative Study on Implementation Practices. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2017; 14(12):1454. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121454
Chicago/Turabian StyleHuys, Nele, Katrien De Cocker, Marieke De Craemer, Marleen Roesbeke, Greet Cardon, and Sara De Lepeleere. 2017. "School Gardens: A Qualitative Study on Implementation Practices" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 14, no. 12: 1454. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121454