Piloting a community co-learning approach to developing a school-based food gardening program

Research suggests children learn vital capabilities from school-based food gardening through engaging in a range of positive human and non-human relationships. Garden interactions support children to navigate pressing vulnerabilities, some related to personal and social circumstances, others to planetary crisis, climate change, and food system decline. Yet across the ACT we see underutilised school gardens and we hear of teachers feeling time poor and ill-equipped to meaningfully incorporate gardening into programs.
Inspired by the ACT Future of Education Strategy’s Stronger Communities for Learning priority, this study combines community partnering, inquiry learning, and multidisciplinary methods to investigate a community co-learning approach to developing a food gardening program, and to test tools for evaluating the program’s impact on children’s personal and social capabilities. The key partner in this study is the socio-culturally diverse community of Isabella Plains Early Childhood School. Adaptable, scalable learnings for ACT Education will be identified during the study.