Abstract
Through research findings and autobiographical narratives, three teacher educators working in environmental education (EE) and garden-based learning (GBL) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) explored the ways that EE remains marginal in the process of teacher candidates learning to become teachers, in spite of the university’s high-level commitments to goals of sustainability. The challenges and generative potential of “gardening the margins” become both a metaphor and an example of pedagogical places and practices in the landscape of teacher education, both in the placement of EE within UBC’s teacher education programme and in specific narratives from The UBC Orchard Garden, a campus teaching and learning garden and outdoor classroom.
Résumé
À travers les résulats des études et les récits autobiographiques, trois enseignants travaillants pour l’éducation de l’environnement (EE) et l’enseignement agricole (GBL) à l’Université de Colombie Britannique (UBC) ont exploré les moyens que EE demeure faible dans la méthode que les apprenants deviennent des enseignants, malgré des engagements particulièrement élévés en ce qui a trait aux buts de durabilité. Les défis et les potentiels créateurs du « jardinage en marges » deviennent une métaphore et un exemple des places pédagogiques dans le paysage de la formation des enseignants, les deux dans les emplacements de EE dans le programme d’éducation UBC et les événements spécifiques du jardin Orchard Garden UBC, un jardin qui vise à l’apprentissage et l’enseignement dans une classe en plein air.
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Notes
- 1.
In draft stages of this re-visioning process, this strand was more explicitly entitled “Social & Ecological Justice and Diversity”.
- 2.
- 3.
The current draft of the BC Science curriculum (British Columbia Ministry of Education 2015) includes place-based learning, First Peoples’ principles of learning, key ecological concepts, and principles and themes of human-society-nature relationships.
- 4.
For more about The UBC Orchard Garden, visit the project’s blog at http://theorchardgarden.blogspot.ca/
- 5.
For more about the Intergenerational Landed Learning Project, visit http://landedlearning.educ.ubc.ca/
- 6.
For more on UBC Sustainability’s (n.d.) Teaching & Learning sustainability pathways across all teaching programmes, see https://sustain.ubc.ca/campus-initiatives/teaching-learning
- 7.
For more information about the house names, visit https://wiki.ubc.ca/Totem_Park_Residence
- 8.
See also the online journal ecopoetics: https://ecopoetics.wordpress.com/
- 9.
UBC released its new strategic plan in 2018 entitled Shaping UBC’s Next Century, but this new plan is not discussed here as the previous plan was in force when this chapter was written.
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Ostertag, J.K., Gerofsky, S.G., Scott, S.A. (2019). Learning to Teach Environmental Education by Gardening the Margins of the Academy. In: Karrow, D., DiGiuseppe, M. (eds) Environmental and Sustainability Education in Teacher Education. International Explorations in Outdoor and Environmental Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25016-4_8
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