Art, Nature and the Virtual Environment: Three strands of a narrative inquiry written around a schoolyard garden as a collection of "events"

Cuerden, Barbara2013-11-072013-11-0720102010Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 49-05, page: 2836.http://hdl.handle.net/10393/28684http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-12668Working with an organization outside the public school system that was creating schoolyard gardens, I began to think about culture and cultivation inside and outside of schooling practices. The liveliness of schoolyard gardens presented possibilities for enlivening educational discourses. With two participants I planted a container box "schoolyard" garden outside Lamoureux Hall, which houses the Faculty of Education. Utilizing aspects of place-based pedagogy, ecoliteracy, ecopedagogy and a metissage of a/r/tography, eco-art and writing as a method of inquiry, we tended the garden and dwelled upon ideas of nature, culture, and their intersection in a particular place. Our garden experiences left cyber footprints in virtual space as blog spots on a thesis blog site1. The garden and the inquiry it generated outside is brought back inside the Education building as a Masters thesis. The garden grew in different and unpredictable ways due to intense construction on site entwining the planter boxes with unforeseen variables. 1http://escapelot.wordpress.com121 p.enEducation, Environmental.Education, Pedagogy.Art, Nature and the Virtual Environment: Three strands of a narrative inquiry written around a schoolyard garden as a collection of "events"Thesis