The Impact of School Gardens on Youth Social and Emotional Well-Being

Abstract

Background: When social and emotional learning (SEL) is taught in schools, children experience better academic and health outcomes. SEL can also lead to feelings of school connectedness. One promising intervention to teach SEL is school garden programming. Objective: This dissertation aims to answer the question of how exposure to school gardens impacts youth SEL. This question is divided into two studies and one case report that examine the existing school garden literature that measures SEL and test whether school garden exposure is associated with SEL outcomes including student self-reported learning and feelings of school connectedness. Methods: Study one is a scoping review that synthesized peer-reviewed articles examining the relationship between the five SEL components (relationship skills, responsible decision-making, self-awareness, social awareness, and self-management) and school garden exposure. When confronted with the challenge of updating the scoping review search, we wrote a computer application called Open Update Re-run De-duplicate (OUR2D2) to make the process of comparing literature review search results easier over time. We describe OUR2D2 in the case report. Study three was a secondary analysis of mixed methods data from a 2017 school garden evaluation. In this paper, we examined the impact of length of school garden exposure on third, fourth, and fifth grade student self-reported learning and feelings of school connectedness. Results: Of the 1968 identified studies in the scoping review, 8 examined SEL outcomes as they relate to school gardens. While the majority of articles with quantitative data did not have statistically significant findings, the qualitative data suggested that there is a positive relationship between school garden exposure and SEL. In the case report, we found that OUR2D2 saved our study team 21 hours of work by eliminating the task of re-screening articles from the original search. In study two, we did not find a statistically significant relationship between school garden exposure and self-reported learning or feelings of school connectedness. Regardless of length, there was a statistically significant relationship between school garden exposure and self-report learning among fifth grade students as well as students who identify as female and/or Latino/a (Hispanic). The qualitative data revealed that most students enjoy gardening which may facilitate learning and school connectedness. Conclusions: Combined, these studies suggest that there may be a relationship between school garden exposure and SEL but more investigation is needed, especially research using quantitative methods. These findings also point to the importance of considering racial and ethnic disparities as well as the origins of those disparities in public health research and interventions aiming to improve SEL.