Sustaining Garden Stewardship: Environmental Education in Rural Youth Development Programs

To help youth create a viable society and cope with future ecological crises, this qualitative research further develops a practice that I call garden ecopedagogy. I rely on the literature of transformational learning, emerging adulthood, eco-psychology and a post-modern appraisal of environmental education to explore community-based garden education. Using a grounded theory approach, I conducted ten, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Resourceful Communities—a coalition of grassroots rural development organizations—to answer these questions: How do participants’ worldviews and educational paradigms impact garden education? And, how can these findings inform the design of a garden ecopedagogy curricula? My analysis pointed to an effective experiential teaching strategy which merged instructivist and constructivist theories of learning. I also found that affirming rural priorities and perspectives of nature is vital to environmental education. The youth-directed garden-education programs can help bridge class divides and transform individuals to become assertive, compassionate, and effective adults.Master of Scienc