Gardencue is an easy and user-friendly app designed to record information about your garden. This includes everything from planting seeds to harvest, as well as providing tips on how to best care for plants and garden spaces.
Behavior observations were conducted by nonparticipating observers on 53 students from two sixth grade classes who alternately were taught in the school garden and classroom for 10 weeks (n = 22 boys and 31 girls). An emotion diary was used to collect data, with social interactions recorded by observers. Results show that pupils experienced positive emotions like happiness and pride more frequently and intensely in the garden than elsewhere; disgust and fear weren’t reported nearly as often or reported less intensely than anticipated.
The findings of this study reaffirm previous research which demonstrated that students are more effective learners and motivated in school gardens compared to traditional classroom settings; their behavior also reflects this fact. School gardens encourage cooperative behavior between students, which is key for group learning and allows students to support and challenge one another. Furthermore, the garden offers more opportunities for social interactions and positive emotions than science lessons in a classroom. Results from systematic behavioral observation rely on counting social interactions such as communication and cooperation as they are more easily observable than other forms of interactions that may be difficult to observe or describe.
