School gardens must overcome a range of challenges to be successful but are often lauded for fostering hands-on education and real-world learning. This thematic literature review synthesises 22 journal articles and two book chapters, extending on previous reviews by amassing their themes into one singular reference point for scholars, while…

This project uses participatory inquiry methods with Year 2/3 students at Glenelg Primary School in Adelaide, Australia, to address a student-identified desire to learn outside more often. Through a seven-week inquiry, students selected areas around the school to explore, collected and analysed existing plant data, and delivered garden plans. The…

Many countries include core competencies in their educational curricula. The purpose of competencies is to ensure a holistic education that equips students with skills to flourish in the twenty-first century. Across the literature on this topic, however, there are limited studies that investigate how primary schools embed competencies into their…

Food gardens are an underdeveloped resource for teaching and research in Australian universities. While some campuses have food or botanical gardens, outside the biological or physical sciences food growing is not routinely incorporated into mainstream curricula. This article investigates why and how we might change this. It examines universities'…

This research aims to contribute to the literature on embedding financial literacies in a school market garden programme. It seeks to do this by using one school market gardening programme in an Australian primary education setting as a case study, exploring its role and perceived benefits in developing financial literacies in students. This…

Anthropocentric thinking produces fractured ecological perspectives that perpetuate destructive, wasteful behaviours. Recognition of the relational entanglements of humans and more-than-humans, particularly through our everyday visceral encounters with food, may be able to encourage ethical ecological thinking and practices that lay the…

Despite teacher interest in wanting to engage students in learning beyond the classroom, many don't have the skills or confidence to do so. Drawing from an earlier study that examined outdoor, environmental and sustainability pedagogies across three Australian primary (elementary) schools, this paper presents and examines two teaching and learning…

It is apparent that the dimensions of health within and under the auspices of schooling are open to contributions by other providers that exist outside of school systems. We acknowledge schools often resort to outside providers for a number of reasons; for example, to broaden the curriculum experiences for children, or to compensate for the…

Purpose: Primary schools provide continuous, intensive contact with large numbers of children starting from a young age, thus providing an appropriate setting for the promotion of healthy eating through food and nutrition education (FNE). This qualitative study explores the views of Australian primary school parents about FNE in primary schools.…

The Australian Curriculum is a policy document that directly influences the lived realities of millions of students and teachers. However, navigating and understanding the Australian Curriculum can be confusing due to discipline-specific meta-language. This poses problems when attempting to access the Curriculum in research that extends beyond the…

Purpose: This paper examines the views of Australian primary school parents regarding the food and nutrition education (FNE) curriculum. Associations with personal values (Universalism and Hedonism) and demographic measures were also explored. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was conducted among 787 parents in March 2021. Parents…

Meaningful and enjoyable experiences are important in the education of children. In this qualitative case study, the garden program (incl. market garden shop, garden care, Kid's Kitchen, and chicken coop) in one Australian primary school was explored to determine its impact on the mathematical learning of children. Data were collected using focus…

School-based gardens (SBGs) are contributing to improvements in many areas of education, including nutrition, health, connectedness and engagement of students. While considerable research has been conducted in other parts of the world, research in Australia provides limited understanding of the impact of SBGs. The aim of this paper is to give a…

There has been a recent surge in the popularity of school gardening programmes with different models claiming to address learning outcomes within the curriculum. For example, the 'kitchen garden' concept has had a rapid uptake across many Australian schools, promoted by both government curriculum support documents, and private organisations.…

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has been identified as a keystone teaching and learning area for developing students' knowledge and skills on interdisciplinary critical thinking and problem solving (We use the term 'interdisciplinary' because discipline knowledge and methods were integrated from different…