About this Research Topic
The use of Garden- Based Learning (GBL) programs has been growing recently, mostly to promote environmentally healthy habits and to convey scientific thinking. Additionally, they have become the tool to engage low performance students; As Desmond, Grieshop, and Subramaniam highlighted in 2004, GBL is an instructional methodology that uses gardens as learning environments. GBL programs mainly use outdoor spaces as the base of the so-called experiential learning, meaning that human beings gain knowledge due to the transformation occurring after the experience.
School and urban gardens are spaces that facilitate the learning process because they imply active and concrete experiences that help to assimilate information and create abstract concepts. This new approach to education is relevant to the young generations, considering that they are more active, hands-on orientated, and visual learners. Thus, we may need to reconsider the way we applied educational methods traditionally.
In this Research Topic, we aim to gather evidence on how learning gardens may represent naturalized environments to grow and play, as well as spaces where young generations might develop more sustainable and environmental attitudes, concerns and behaviors towards nature.
We welcome manuscripts that would help to create a body of research regarding new approaches in education for sustainability and environmental issues. Concretely, this Research Topic pursues to provide comprehension of how learning gardens might contribute to shape citizens who are more concerned, caring towards the nature, promoting values, knowledge, and behaviors that might help to preserve the environment and help to face the global environmental crisis.
We encourage authors to submit manuscripts regarding the following issues:
- Relations between school gardens, pro-environmental attitudes, behaviours and knowledge.
- Garden-Based Learning programs for environmental literacy and sustainability in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education.
- Didactic proposals’ implementations in learning gardens including environmental and sustainability education.
- Urban Gardens as informal educational settings for sustainability education (protection towards the environment, ecological consumption and production, etc.)
- Cooperative learning, participation and inclusion through experiences in school gardens.
Manuscripts might be original research, conceptual and systematic reviews, mini-reviews, perspective articles and article commentaries.
School and urban gardens are spaces that facilitate the learning process because they imply active and concrete experiences that help to assimilate information and create abstract concepts. This new approach to education is relevant to the young generations, considering that they are more active, hands-on orientated, and visual learners. Thus, we may need to reconsider the way we applied educational methods traditionally.
In this Research Topic, we aim to gather evidence on how learning gardens may represent naturalized environments to grow and play, as well as spaces where young generations might develop more sustainable and environmental attitudes, concerns and behaviors towards nature.
We welcome manuscripts that would help to create a body of research regarding new approaches in education for sustainability and environmental issues. Concretely, this Research Topic pursues to provide comprehension of how learning gardens might contribute to shape citizens who are more concerned, caring towards the nature, promoting values, knowledge, and behaviors that might help to preserve the environment and help to face the global environmental crisis.
We encourage authors to submit manuscripts regarding the following issues:
- Relations between school gardens, pro-environmental attitudes, behaviours and knowledge.
- Garden-Based Learning programs for environmental literacy and sustainability in Primary, Secondary and Higher Education.
- Didactic proposals’ implementations in learning gardens including environmental and sustainability education.
- Urban Gardens as informal educational settings for sustainability education (protection towards the environment, ecological consumption and production, etc.)
- Cooperative learning, participation and inclusion through experiences in school gardens.
Manuscripts might be original research, conceptual and systematic reviews, mini-reviews, perspective articles and article commentaries.
Keywords: Garden based programs, experiental education, sustainability, environmentalism
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
