Paper "GARDEN CARE. LABORATORIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL DIDACTIC". ESREA – University of Southern Denmark, Institute of Philosophy, Education and the Study of Religions. 1-4 March 2012

The Garden Care research project was meant to promote the innovation of environmental practices in primary school, within the theoretical framework of an “ecological pedagogy” (Mortari, 2011), phenomenologically oriented to environmental protection. 6 out of the 12 classes of first and second year of primary school involved in the project were from region Basilicata. The primary purpose of the project was to allow children to rediscover, in the formal places of education, the informal practices of work connected to the sustainable culture of gardening, which have long been experimented in the UK and the USA. The secondary purpose was to experiment the autobiographic approach (Demetrio, 1996, 1998, 2003¸ Cambi, 2002) in teaching environmental subjects, focusing on the connection between taking care of the plants/taking care of the others and the writing of the cure. Within this theoretical reference framework, the cooperative research consisted of two phases: environmental “live” teaching in gardens and environmental reflexive teaching. In the live teaching phase the gardening setting was set for educational activities to be carried on throughout a whole term. In the second phase of reflexive teaching the dialectic connection between gardening culture and autobiographic narration was brought out, with the intervention of the research group and using autobiographic writing as a mediator. Several analogies between the language of nature, the language of body and the language of self-care were pointed out throughout this phase. Several texts focusing on the relationship between care of the body and care of the plants were produced. Autobiographic writing “gave word” to experience crating that Self-Other-Earth circle that produced relevant effects during the process of environmental learning. Partial results of the project, still presently in progress, will be presented at the Congress