This research aims to develop an innovative agricultural program that promotes agriculture literacy among children in urban neighborhoods, fostering self-sufficiency and cultivating future agricultural leaders. While current agriculture secondary education programs in the United States are effective, there is a need for a revised curriculum that…

This article maps out existing research regarding the effectiveness of subject-integrated school garden teaching. The school subjects of interest are mathematics, languages and science, and subject integration is defined as a link between these subjects and school garden teaching. The article is based on an integrative review and is derived from…

Despite the importance of bees, there is a gap in the public's understanding of them. To help address this gap, we developed the outreach tool Experience Bees, a series of simple learning and hands-on activities to teach community members about bees and their importance in our landscapes. Program evaluation showed that participants learned about…

Growing plants is a popular and easy method to facilitate preschoolers' scientific exploration and positive attitude toward the environment, as it creates an awareness that nature is a magical place to be explored. This study examines a year-long garden-based curriculum in South Korea, specifically a cotton project, and its effects on 4- to…

This article reports on a qualitative investigation of Australian, grade 4 primary (elementary) school children's reflections on their learning in a year-long kitchen garden program. Focus group interviews, journal collection, and observations were conducted with three cohorts of students (age 9-11 years) to give insight into whether kitchen…

The teaching of environmental topics is still the main challenge. In this paper we discuss how student teachers learning of experiential teaching strategies influenced their teaching of EE in primary schools in Tanzania. Student teachers learning to use tree-planting as example of outdoor learning for the teaching of environmental topics were the…

School gardens and garden-based learning, though not new in the landscape of United States public education, have gained great popularity in recent years. Scholars from myriad disciplines have examined school garden programs' impact on outcomes ranging from standardized test scores to childhood obesity. As school gardens become commonplace across…

School gardens have been an active part of United States schools since 1890, when the first school garden was established in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Since the turn of the 20th century school gardens have greatly expanded to include inner city schools in some of the largest metropolitan areas of the country. Since the early 1990s, school gardens…

In this article we describe the development, implementation, and some of the early impacts of Nurture thru Nature (NtN), an American after-school and summer program designed to introduce elementary school students in disadvantaged, urban public schools to natural science and environmental education. The program, which began operations in 2010 as a…

Extension agents' use of demonstration gardens was studied to determine how gardens are employed in horticultural programming, perceived benefits and challenges of using gardens for Extension programming, and desired competencies. Gardens are primarily used to enhance educational efforts by providing hands-on learning experiences. Greatest…

The "train-the-trainer" model successfully created volunteer educators in insect identification. Intensive training programs prepared 71 individuals during 2 1/2-day (20 hour) training sessions. Trainees included university Extension faculty (13), agricultural professionals (13), and certified Master Gardeners (45). The sessions were…

Summer 4-H camps present an untapped opportunity for advancement of mission mandates. The project reported here immersed campers in healthy living experiential learning. The goal was to improve self-efficacy and health behaviors related to nutrition and physical activity. Data was collected from enrolled campers through multiple survey tools. A…

This article presents results from a mixed-method evaluation of a structured cooking and gardening program in Australian primary schools, focusing on program impacts on the social and learning environment of the school. In particular, we address the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program objective of providing a pleasurable experience that has…

Community gardening provides many benefits for students like outdoor physical activity, an understanding of plant life cycles, food production and healthy eating (Blair, 2009; Whiren, 1995). Gardening also provides hands-on learning opportunities to draw parallels between what is needed for plants to grow and what students need to be healthy. When…

Although educators widely use school gardens for experiential education, researchers have not systematically examined the evaluative literature on school-gardening outcomes. The author reviewed the U.S. literature on children's gardening, taking into account potential effects, school-gardening outcomes, teacher evaluations of gardens as learning…