Gardening: Culture and Science Erasmus Project

Project Title

Gardening: Culture and Science

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Natural sciences; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

The main objective of the project ‘Gardening: Culture and Science’ was to create two cross-curricular good practices with inquiry-based and project based learning and teaching methods. Using projects as a method within inquiry-based learning students participate from the very beginning, from planning to project assessment playing seminal roles in the process, planning, carrying out and managing various work phases. Being involved like this in their assignments motivated our students to be more precise, interested and to take responsibility for their studies. Teachers involved in this project had the opportunity to help their students as facilitators instead of the traditional role of leaders/controlleurs of the learning activities.

Seven secondary schools participated in this project.
– Közgazdasági Politechnikum Alternatív Gimnázium és Szakközépiskola (Budapest, Hungary)
– Het Assink (Haaksbergen, the Netherlands)
– Aepec College/Lycee Prive St Joseph (Bruz, France)
– Instituto Statale Pitagora (Pozzuoli, Italy)
– Städt. Alexander-Hegius-Gymnasium (Ahaus, Germany)
– Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych nr 19 (Cracow, Poland)
– Gerze Sehit Nurullah Sarac Anadolu Lisesi (Gerze, Turkey)
In each school there were 2-3 teachers and 20-25 students involved in this project throughout the years.

This project was about gardens, gardening. Each partner school chose a culture plant typical of their national/regional cuisine (key characteristics: it must be edible, typical in the country and it must grow from seed to harvest in one year).

In the first year, each school built an indoor and an outdoor school garden. The structure of the gardens was planned and built by students. In the following years, students planted the seeds and carried out examinations of their on choices (soil, water, sunny hours, temperature, growth of the plants etc). At the project meetings students shared their plans, their struggles and their successes with each other and gave each other helpful tips. They discussed some expectations on how each cultural plant would live and grow in each school’s garden. Students also created time-lapse videos on the growth of the plants. Finally, students made international comparisons on the growth of each culture plant in each country and they made some suggestions for planting these plants in the future.

Simultaneously, students prepared interviews with some experts of different fields. In the first year, students debated on the possible interviewees and decided to interview the men-on-the-street, a medical expert, an agriculture expert and a chef. Students in partnerships created a series of questions (debated on the project meetings) and each country conducted the interviews with the experts. The results were tallied, compared and presented by the partner schools responsible for the interview.

We had 7 learning/teaching/training activities (we called them project meetings) with 2-3 participating teachers and 5-6 students from each school. The main objective of these meetings were to get to know each other, to visit the school gardens and the possibility of discussing arisen questions of gardening and the interviews. Cultural and creativity elements of the project meetings were very important for us. Creativity workshops (like a cooking contests or different types of arts and crafts sessions) were organized at the meetings.

One of the final products includes the school gardens in each school which will be further used. There is also a web-site where all the results of the gardening, the examinations, the time lapse videos, the cultural and historical background information, the results of the agricultural research and the actions made on the project meetings are shown (https://erasmusgardening.poli.hu/). We also created to pamphlets to advertise the good practices (both can be find on the website as well). Finally, the students created a magazine on what they had done throughout the three years (this was also uploaded to our website in four parts – https://erasmusgardening.poli.hu/product/resoults/ ).

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 247570 Eur

Project Coordinator

KOZGAZDASAGI POLITECHNIKUM ALTERNATIV GIMNAZIUM & Country: HU

Project Partners

• Het Assink
• AEPEC COLLEGE/LYCEE PRIVE ST JOSEPH
• ISTITUTO STATALE PITAGORA
• Gerze Sehit Nurullah Sarac Anadolu Lisesi
• Städt. Alexander-Hegius-Gymnasium
• Zespol Szkol Ogolnoksztalcacych nr 19