Capacity Building for School Gardening: A Swedish Case Study

Abstract

This article reflects on experiences from Swedish research on school gardening and greening school grounds. A process-orientated case study in two Swedish cities is discussed, based on future workshops as a platform for situated capacity building in interaction between stakeholders in the in-school context and stakeholders from outside the local school, such as school ground planners and school ground administrators. The case study indicates that using the future workshop as a research method is a way to involve the stakeholders as subjects in the production of new knowledge, which means a collaborative production of both articulated and tacit knowledge. The case study shows that new approaches to school ground management could help a school make its outdoor environment more suitable for educational purposes, including gardening.