Prospective teachers learn how to tend a school garden on the Haarentor campus. The "Campusacker" project, led by educationalist Ines Oldenburg, aims to help bring education for sustainable development into schools.
Gardening is not always a bed of roses. A group of students are experiencing this on this Monday morning shortly before the end of the summer semester. In pouring rain, the prospective special education and primary school teachers in wellies and rain jackets trudge across a small field between campus buildings A 7 and A 10, loosening the soil with rakes and plucking weeds from the ground. "We've been really lucky with the weather so far this summer semester. Today is the first real rainy day," summarises Ines Oldenburg, Professor of Educational Science specialising in the didactics of subject teaching at the Institute of Educational Sciences. Some of her students are busy weeding the field, which is surrounded by a self-built picket fence, while others are harvesting fennel or kohlrabi. Since March, chard, corn, spring onions, courgettes, cucumbers, potatoes, sugar snap peas, tomatoes and various types of lettuce have also been growing on the 80 square metre "campus field". "It's just nice to work practically as well as theoretically during your studies," says Liv Edmunds, who is studying special education.
"With the campus vegetable garden, we want to prepare future teachers to look after a school garden," explains Ines Oldenburg. Children can gain practical experience of the environment and sustainability by growing vegetables, for example in primary school science lessons or in special needs education. The background to this is the UNESCO programme "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD), to which Germany has also committed itself. It aims to empower young people to act in an ecologically sustainable way, and school gardens are one of the means of bringing ESD to schools. In order to be able to implement this later as a teacher, the students also deal with the scientific and theoretical foundations of ESD in a seminar alongside their practical work.
Studies show: The more sustainability young people experience at their educational institutions, the more sustainably they act
Studies have shown that the more sustainability young people experience at their educational institutions, the more sustainably they act. A vegetable patch, whether at university or at school, acts as a place of learning for all three dimensions of sustainability - the ecological, economic and social. The ecological dimension primarily includes knowledge of the natural cycle of sowing, growing and harvesting. Students learn about the conditions under which plants grow and how biodiversity, soil quality, fertiliser and weather affect growth - and can later pass this knowledge on to their schoolchildren. There is also the economic dimension, as a vegetable patch can also be used to address economic issues such as "How does agriculture pay off" or "Why are organic products often more expensive?" in a way that is suitable for children. Last but not least, a school garden can promote the social dimension of sustainability by teaching children to work together on a project and share responsibility.
A total of 13 students have been working on the Campusacker this semester. One of them is Justus Koch: "A school garden like this can be easily implemented with a third or fourth class in primary school," he is convinced - and hopes that pupils will one day be infected by his enthusiasm for the vegetable patch: "I really enjoyed seeing how a wasteland becomes a real field with many different types of vegetables. It's just a great sense of achievement". His fellow student Caleb Groenemeyer also shares this feeling of self-efficacy: "I was really sceptical at the beginning as to whether such a farming project could work. But the longer it goes on, the more I enjoy it, because you see more and more of your work and can then enjoy the yield in the form of fresh vegetables."
Successful co-operation with the "CampusAckerdemie"
For the vegetable plot, Ines Oldenburg works together with "CampusAckerdemie", an educational programme run by the Ackerdemia association and funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, among others. The Potsdam-based social enterprise promotes campus fields, for example, and helps university lecturers to select a suitable area, find suitable seeds and plan the cultivation of up to 30 vegetable varieties. The project also receives financial support from the BINGO Environmental Foundation of Lower Saxony. Within the university, the project is supported in particular by the grounds maintenance department of building management, climate protection management and the AStA, whose members look after the neighbouring CampusGarten. The project is initially scheduled to run for three years and will be extended if the evaluation is positive. Next year, Ines Oldenburg would also like to involve Computing Science students, who will develop an automatic fertilisation and irrigation system and install it on the field. Alba Lynn Seifert, who also worked in the field, highly recommends the campus garden module to other students: "I think it's cool that we work in the field in such a practical way. You don't often get this experience during your studies." The seminar participants divide the yields among themselves. Today, in addition to fennel and kohlrabi, they also harvested courgettes and chard - a small bonus that quickly makes you forget the rainy weather.
