Session Information
17 SES 08, Pre-School and Elementary Education in Europe
Paper Session
Contribution
When compulsory schooling was introduced in Sweden in 1842, school gardens were proposed as an in-kind part of the teacher’s salary but also as a subject for teaching. Eventually, the pedagogical ambitions of the school gardens grew and gardening became an almost mandatory school subject during the whole period of the system of the primary “folk school” [folkskolan] 1842–1962. This indicates that school gardens had an especially strong hold in Sweden, in relation to many other countries where the school garden movement did not have the same attachment to compulsory, nation-wide schooling or the same long period of existence (Robin 2001; Forrest and Ingram 2003; Gregory Kohlstedt 2008; Larsson forthcoming).
The empirical question that is to be answered in this paper is: Which educational ideas were linked to the school gardens and how did they change over time? By answering this question and relating the answers to historical changes in school and society in Sweden, the main aim is to understand the emergence, development and decline of the school subject of gardening.
This study is part of broader, Swedish Research Council financed project on the cultural history of the Swedish schoolyard (Larsson and Norlin 2012). In the outdoor environment of the schools, school gardens were often substantial elements. Theoretically, the project links to the recent scholarly interest in material aspects of schooling, as well as in questions of space and place (e.g. Gutman & de Coninck-Smith 2008; Burke & Grosvenor 2008). This specific study is concerned with one specific educational use of the schoolyard. The focus of the analysis in this case lies on legitimacy and function.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Burke, Catherine & Ian Grosvenor (2008) School. London: Reaktion. Forrest, Mary and Valerie Ingram, ‘School Gardens in Ireland, 1901–24’, Garden History 31:1 (2003), p. 80–94; Gregory Kohlstedt, Sally, ‘”A Better Crop of Boys and Girls”: The School Gardening Movement, 1890–1920’, History of Education Quarterly 48: 1 (2008), p. 58–93 Gutman, Marta & Ning de Coninck-Smith (2008) Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space and the Material Culture of Children. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press. Larsson, Anna & Björn Norlin, ”Den svenska skolgårdens historia”, Vägval i skolans historia 12: 2-3 (2012), p. 16-20. Larsson, Anna, “A children’s place? The school playground debate in postwar Sweden”, History of Education (forthcoming) Robin, Libby, ‘School Gardens and Beyond: Progressive Conservation, Moral Imperatives and the Local Landscape’, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 21 (2001), p. 87–92.
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