Contaminación

This was an emergent theme in the study. Using SCT, we recall that social,

environmental and personal motivations are all interdependent in order for change to occur. In the literature and in the present study, most respondents are teachers who are already interested in gardening. Thus, increasing the social and environmental opportunities to enact their interest

68 is likely to lead to change.

Dobbs, Relf and McDaniel (1998) report on receiving responses from a broad-based survey sent to principals of 100 randomly chosen schools in the state of Virginia, and asked to distribute the questionnaires randomly to teachers without concern for prior expressed interest in gardening (Dobbs, Relf and McDaniel 1998). They received a 34% response rate (n=337). Of those, 13% were not interested in using horticulture or gardening in the classroom and 88% were interested. However it is likely that teachers with no interest would also simply have not returned the questionnaire. Nonetheless, within the group of interested teachers, most (87%) indicated that they gardened at home or at school and that most (85%) currently used plants or seed in their classrooms (Dobbs, Relf and McDaniel 1998).

Thus, teacher interest, especially given the non-mandatory nature of school gardening, is a critical ingredient in school garden success. Laura and Ines both referred to their own

childhoods as an example of why they sought benefits for their students through gardening. Ines grew up in a rural community, in forested land. Laura had a garden growing up:

… the school is very much a hub of the community and having a garden here allows the kids to experience what many of us experienced as children and took for granted, having our own gardens.

Edward, with 20+ years of teaching experience, commented that:

I think a teacher can only teach things well if you can be passionate about what you're doing so you have to find a way that, to make everything work for you.

Indira discussed finding real meaning in the garden:

I think the large picture is obviously taking care of the planet and … emotional and mental health and for really bringing real meaning to your day in whatever capacity, engaging with living things beyond our fellow human I think is really, really important.

69 Greenwood (2010) reminds us:

No matter how scientifically rigorous, politically informed, or culturally responsive, environmental education is barren if it does not include re-enchantment with the wide world of creation, encounters with the others, and gratitude for the gift of life. (10) It’s important for teachers to be moved by their own sense of wonder in order to engage with the garden as a teaching tool. Teachers’ knowledge and skill as gardeners is less important than their willingness to try to bring their class to a garden bed and see if they can create

meaning through experience. However, the development of gardening skills would also increase students’ and teachers’ self-efficacy in the garden, and this would promote more school

gardening through the sharing of these skills across ages. SCT reminds us that internal, personal motivation needs to be matched with social and environmental enablers. At the same time, if the social and environmental enablers are already present, new personal motivations may arise among both teachers and students.

Wistoft (2013) develops the idea that passion for the subject matter is critical for students to learn. Unravelling the mystery of how students respond so well to a gardening and cooking program, she posits:

In the Gardens for Bellies programme, the instructors show their love for nature, the soil, crops, and food in personal and different ways—they do not all love the same thing, and they each act from their own personal passion. … But just as it is not enough to talk of one’s love, it is not enough (from a systems-theoretical point of view) merely to feel it. The passion must become part of the system’s self-referentially coded communication. In this case, the passion is doubled by the passion to communicate the passion, as one instructor says:

My teaching is my passion for showing the pupils my passion.

It is here, in the way life and passion are brought together, that the most important elements in the instructors’ identity are created. (p. 137)

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In this way, teacher affect is very important to student learning, and this is doubly true in school gardens, where teachers’ own interest in the subject matter supports their confidence with their students in the outdoor environment, away from the “comfort zone” of the classroom, as Edward put it.

Gardens can increase teacher collaboration (Thorp 2006). This supports the social enabling factors at work in SCT, where the social modelling of a behaviour supports increased personal activity and hence the development of environmental support in reciprocal triadic determinism (Bandura 1986). At Edgewater, the development of the gardens has increased teacher engagement overall with using the outdoors for student instruction, and fostered self- organization among teachers for collaboration. A group of 16 (8 teachers, 7 Early Childhood Educators, and gym teacher) Kindergarten-level teachers, within the school, has met and inaugurated a structure to set in place strategies for using the outdoors.15

At Newcombe, teachers planned to “buddy up” – Grade 3 with K and Grade 3 with Grade 1, to create a mentorship program with their students similar to the Reading Buddies program designed along these lines. This supports the SCT premises on cognitive development, including language ability, observational learning, purposeful behaviour and self-analysis (Bandura 1986). The teachers understand that having a mentorship program could support their goals of bringing the children out to the garden for experiential learning together, and that developing new

efficacies, personally and collectively, can arise from this action.