School Garden Pedagogies ` For more information, Please see websites below: ` Organic Edible Schoolyards & Gardening with Children http://scribd.com/doc/239851214 ` Double Food Production from your School Garden with Organic Tech http://scribd.com/doc/239851079 ` Free School Gardening Art Posters http://scribd.com/doc/239851159` ` Companion Planting Increases Food Production from School Gardens http://scribd.com/doc/239851159 ` Healthy Foods Dramatically Improves Student Academic Success http://scribd.com/doc/239851348 ` City Chickens for your Organic School Garden http://scribd.com/doc/239850440 ` Simple Square Foot Gardening for Schools - Teacher Guide http://scribd.com/doc/239851110

1. Anthropology News • April 2008
i n f o c u s
School Garden Pedagogies
Understanding Childhood Landscapes
Rebecca Zarger
U South Florida
Over the last decade, there has
been renewed interest in the role
that experiences in “nature” play in
children’s development and health,
and many researchers and jour-
nalists have expressed concerns
that US children aren’t spending
enough time “outside.” Some claim
that today’s children and youth
may suffer from what Richard Louv
termed “nature deficit disorder.”
Framing human–environment rela-
tionships as a disorder is prob-
lematic at best, but does suggest a
pattern in the ways childhood inter-
actions with the nonhuman world
are being constructed in North
America and beyond. Children’s
environments, natural and other-
wise, fundamentally shape their
everyday lives. Establishing gardens
in schools and integrating them
within curricula is one proposed
solution to this perceived problem.
With everyone from David Orr to
Alice Waters extolling the virtues of
environmental education through
school gardens, what perspectives
can anthropology of childhood
and environmental anthropology
bring to this debate?
Gardens as “Outdoor
Classrooms”
Experiential science learning
during childhood is thought to
foster environmental stewardship.
School gardens are one locus for
a pedagogical approach to science
and environmental education that
has gained momentum in the US
and internationally. Thousands of
schools have established garden
plots and are integrating them
into standard curricula. Garden-
based learning provides children
and youth with a space for science
experiments, with history, litera-
ture, arts and social studies often
incorporated as well. The shared
wisdom is that school gardens
offer a variety of benefits to chil-
dren and youth: “marketing”
fresh fruits and vegetables to an
increasingly unfit young popula-
tion, thereby improving nutrition;
improving environmental aware-
ness, self-esteem, academic achieve-
ment, teacher job satisfaction and
student–teacher relationships; and
cultivating a “sense of wonder”
for the workings of the natural
world. “Outdoor classrooms” can
bring knowledge and skills of local
community members, particularly
elders or master gardeners, into a
formal school setting.
If watching as children erupt in
excitement when they harvest food
they planted is not convincing
enough, research in science and
agricultural education in a diver-
sity of school settings suggests that
many children respond in posi-
tive ways to school garden experi-
ences. However, many educators
are uncertain as to how to create
gardening curricula that meet these
various goals, as well as state-level
standardized testing and federal No
Child Left Behind criteria, to ensure
program funding. Recent studies
of school gardening illustrate the
challenges that researchers, admin-
istrators, school districts, teachers
and parents face in creating, imple-
menting and maintaining school
gardens, particularly with uneven
allocation of resources across
schools and communities.
Insights from ethnographies of
childhood, children and youth,
and on children’s learning in out-
of-school settings have the poten-
tial to influence curricular agendas.
Studies on the impacts of school
gardening often focus on teachers
and parents, or improving assess-
ment for the purpose of meeting
science education curricula stan-
dards in North America or Europe.
Fewer studies have explored chil-
dren’s perceptions of gardens as
pedagogical spaces, or how chil-
dren learn from their peers as they
gain skills through hands-on expe-
riences of pushing seeds into the
soil and watching the results of
their efforts develop and grow.
School gardens are productive
sites for research on children’s
“emergent botanies” (as Cindi Katz
refers to them) and on processes of
developing knowledge, skills and
expertise with local flora during
childhood. Typically research in
agriculture science and environ-
mental education incorporates
structured interviews or written
surveys with children, educators
and parents. Augmenting these
with ethnographic approaches to
information collection—including
visual methods such as photo elic-
itation, giving children cameras
to capture their experiences and
analyzing children’s maps, draw-
ings and journals—deepens what
we know about school gardens as
alternatives to classroom based
learning.
Gardens as “Natural” Spaces
There is little critical examination
of the view of gardens as “natural”
spaces assumed to be inherently
beneficial to children and educa-
tors. Time spent in gardens, whether
planting seedlings or observing as
butterflies harvest nectar, is thought
to nourish healthy minds and
bodies, “green” the school grounds
and encourage environmentally-
conscious decision-making later in
life. Some researchers even claim
that gardening reduces the symp-
toms of ADHD. Evaluating these
claims through ethnographic
research guided by children as well
as parents and educators would
allow for a more nuanced under-
standing of the pedagogical value
of school gardens and their impacts
onchildren’senvironmentalpercep-
tions, knowledge and skills.
Gardening and horticulture
provide for teachers an interac-
tive, experiential space to explore
the intersections between people
and “nature,” to communicate how
fundamental domestication and
cultivation are to human history
and how human activities have
modified Earth’s landscapes over
long periods of time. Garden-based
learningmightfocusonhowcontrol
over access to resources, whether
shaped by gender, age, ethnicity or
social status, affects which plants
are cultivated and who benefits.
Curricula can be designed to give
young people the opportunity to
explore not just plant biology,
but also cultural landscapes. For
example, learning how heirloom
vegetable varieties embody partic-
ular heritages and meanings, by
hearing stories from seed collectors,
allows local experts to share their
knowledge with younger genera-
tions. Other possibilities include
using gardens as spaces to discuss
how the boundary between “wild”
and “domesticated” is socially
constructed, or the consequences
of individual agency and collec-
tive action in response to environ-
mental challenges.
Tampa Bay Area Garden
Research Project
An interdisciplinary research group
at my university has been involved
in studying the process, pedagogy
and impacts of school gardening
in the Tampa Bay area over the
last two years. The aims of the
project—a collaboration between
our “team,” a local public char-
tered primary school and a campus
research center focused on chil-
dren and families—are to better
understand current pedagogies of
school gardens and how garden-
based learning affects children,
parents and teachers. Initial ethno-
Children at Learning Gate school constructed scarecrows in the organic school
garden to protect young watermelon vines. Photo courtesy Laurel Graham
c o m m e n tar y

2. April 2008 • Anthropology News
i n f o c u s
graphic interviews documented the
exchange of knowledge and skills
between teachers and children,
and also the ways children share
what they learn with their parents,
shaping household food choices. In
this way, the focus is on children as
agents in their own and their fami-
lies’ daily lives, contextualized by
parental expectations and school
curricula that influence what and
how children learn about their local
environment through gardening.
Soon, the collaborative will be
hosting the first of two educator
workshops on school gardening
pedagogy. The workshops provide
an opportunity to interview teachers
about their experiences and a way
to link them with university and
community actors to create a
network of professionals interested
in school gardens as spaces for
creating new models of teaching
and learning. The forthcoming
Tampa Bay School Garden Network
(www.TampaBaySGN.org) is an
interactive portal for sharing curri-
cula, funding sources and logis-
tical and personal support. We are
developing curricula that incor-
porate local cultural landscapes,
nutrition, historical ecology and
human dimensions of regional
environmental problems, such as
water scarcity.
School Gardens in Historical
Context
Though school gardening has
recently received a flurry of atten-
tion in North America, incorpo-
rating gardens into schooling is
not a new concept. In the US
and Europe, school gardens were
popular in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. US
school gardens grew in popularity
leading up to World War I, briefly
resurged during World War II, then
waned until the post-Earth Day
Vietnam War era in the 1970s. They
decreased in popularity though the
1980s but over the last decade have
experienced a resurgence.
Outside the US, programs that
promoted school-based agriculture
haveflourishedatdifferentmoments
in the development of colonial and
post-colonial education systems. In
Belize, for example, in response to
mid-twentieth century agricultural
development goals, an educational
program called REAP was estab-
lished throughout the country to
encourage more young Belizeans
to expand small scale horticulture
instead of purchasing imported
foods. Like many interventions,
the program ultimately failed for
a complex of reasons including
lack of continued funding. Decades
later, in the southernmost district
of Belize, another school garden
program has been established in
the wake of a small but severe
hurricane in 2001 to provide addi-
tional vegetables to schools and
families in affected communities.
Critically examining how partic-
ular pedagogical frames, such as
school gardening in the US and
Belize, relate to broader political
and ecological processes could
provide insight into today’s claims
about what is “best” for children in
differing educational and cultural
contexts.
In the contemporary US, given
the recent upswing in publicly
consumed environ-
mental consciousness—
from media conglomer-
ates briefly changing the
color of their icons to green, to
corporate greenwashing and the
“locavore” movement—propo-
nents of school gardens may be
in a position to argue for more
support from state governments
or county school boards. Are
school gardens promising sites
for actively engaged learning?
We can start by asking children,
parents and teachers what they
think.
Rebecca Zarger is an assistant
professor of anthropology at the
University of South Florida. The
project described here is supported by
the USF Collaborative for Children
and Families, in conjunction with
partner Learning Gate School and USF
faculty Laurel Graham, Elaine Howes,
Jennifer Friedman and undergraduate
anthropology honors student Kristen
Dale. Thanks to Jennifer Hunsecker
and Doug Reeser who shared insights
from their research.
David F Lancy
Utah State U
The focus on children in this issue of AN reflects an efflorescence
of child-related work within anthropology. What follows is a brief
accounting of these activities.
Publications
The June 2007 issue of American Anthropologist included a special In
Focus section on “Children, Childhoods and Childhood Studies.”
Edited by Jill Korbin (Case Western Reserve U) and Myra Bluebond-
Langner (Rutgers U-Camden), the issue included six wide-ranging
articles. Jill and Myra have both been instrumental in establishing
childhood studies programs at their institutions (http://case.edu/
artsci/childstudies and http://children.camden.rutgers.edu). Myra
is also the editor of the new multidisciplinary book series in child-
hood studies from Rutgers University Press, which has long published
works on the anthropology of children and youth.
Other important and relatively new publishing outlets for anthro-
pological studies of childhood include the journals Children
Society (Blackwell), Human Nature (Springer) and Childhood (Sage).
This year Wiley-Blackwell and Cambridge University Press will both
publish comprehensive surveys of the field authored by Heather K
Montgomery and David F Lancy, respectively.
Conferences and Meetings
There has been a steady stream of symposia dedicated to topics
that fall at the intersection of anthropology and childhood. One
session at the AAA meeting in Washington DC emphasized the
value of a four-field perspective. Titled “Convening a Summit of
Anthropologists Studying Childhood: Just Like Children, We Can
Learn to Get Along,” the session attracted a very large and enthu-
siastic audience. At the joint Society for Cross-Cultural Research
and Society for Anthropology Sciences meetings in New Orleans in
February there were several relevant panels, including “The Elastic
Nature of Childhood.” The Society for Psychological Anthropology is
sponsoring a conference this summer titled “Re-staging Childhood,”
where scholars will present and discuss work related to the creation of
periods or stages in the lives of children and the transitions that mark
passage from one to the next. In June, Rutgers and Drexel universities
are sponsoring the conference “Emerging Perspectives on Children
in Migratory Circumstances” (http://globalchild.rutgers.edu). In July,
the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth at the University of
Sheffield will sponsor its second international conference (www.shef-
field.ac.uk/cscy).
Interest Group
Also at the 2007 AAA meetings, the Anthropology of Childhood
Interest Group held a well-attended inaugural meeting. This Special
Interest Group was initiated by Kristen Cheney (cheneyke@notes.
udayton.edu) and Susan Shepler (shepler@american.edu), and their
efforts resulted in over 200 individuals electing to join, more than
enough to achieve AAA’s official blessing. The interest group can be
accessed via the listserv ACIG-L@listserv.american.edu. If you would
like to be included, please convey your interest to Kristen or Susan.
All of these announcements—and much, much more—can be found at
http://anthropologyofchildhood.usu.edu. You are invited to submit contri-
butions, including course syllabi, news items and photos, to David Lancy
(david.lancy@usu.edu).
Recent Developments in the Anthropology of Childhood