Adult Environmental Learning in Community Gardens

Community gardens provide people of all ages with abundant opportunities for informal learning, but they have not often been studied in the field of environmental education. This paper examines how two theories from adult education, public pedagogy, and social movement learning may be used as frameworks for understanding informal adult environmental learning in community gardens.

Public pedagogy, as the author defines it, refers to the processes of education that occur outside formal institutions, including popular culture, dominant discourses, and social activism. Social movement learning is learning that occurs as the result of participation in, or exposure to, a social movement. Both theories focus on free-choice and transformational learning.

The author offers a brief history of community gardens, identifying four eras of note and highlighting the influence of public pedagogy in each: (1) the 1890s to the Great Depression, when gardens were about urban reform and self-help; they contributed to assimilation of immigrants and reinforcement of social mores, ideologies, and class structures; (2) the victory gardens of World Wars I and II, which provided opportunities for self-help, skills training, and subsistence food; they promoted the dominant discourses of nationalistic pride and patriotism; (3) the grassroots community gardens of the 1960s to 1980s, which served as symbols of community development and activism toward ecological revitalization and social justice; and (4) the recent expansion of community gardens and urban greening efforts that began in the 1990s as part of a social movement to address food safety and health concerns and grew to encompass social justice, community, and identity-building. The author notes that, in each incarnation, community gardens have been sites of public pedagogy and social movement learning.

The author explores the roots of social movement learning theory and outlines the contributions of the various philosophical traditions, principles, and practices that have shaped it, including liberal, progressive, humanist, and radical adult education. The author applies those frameworks, along with ideas from Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci about ideological hegemony and counter hegemony, as well as from educator and philosopher Paulo Friere on “concientización,” to the current food movement in general, and to community gardens in particular. In short, the author discusses how the food movement—and associated activities such as food preparation, community gardens, farmers markets, and school gardens—could play a role in empowering individuals and communities to challenge dominant ecologically destructive paradigms.

In reviewing the learning that occurs in community gardens, the author notes that learning may be formal, informal, or incidental, and individual or collective. Individual learning may focus on farming, food, or culture, but also may include science, ecology, and the environment. The garden may be a site for sensory and culinary epiphany for the individual learner, or it may provide the setting for the development of a more eco-centric worldview. It may even be a place for therapy, contributing to physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. Individuals may also come together to engage in collective learning in community gardens. The author highlights the strong connection between collective learning through the creation of community gardens and the construction of civil society. Planning and bringing about change in the form of a garden, he posits, promotes “communicative interaction,” which can lead to learning and practice of reciprocity, trust, and cooperation. Community gardens may also be sites for the promotion of decolonization and cultural identity, environmental justice, and antiracist and multicultural education.