ArticlePDF Available

The Green Brigade: The Educational Effects of a Community- based Horticultural Program on the Horticultural Knowledge and Environmental Attitude of Juvenile Offenders

Authors:

Abstract

The Green Brigade horticultural program is a community-based treatment and diversion program for juvenile offenders. The program is used for vocational training and rehabilitation. The objectives of this study were to determine if participation in the Green Brigade program improved the horticultural knowledge and the environmental attitudes of participating juvenile offenders. Participants of the Green Brigade program significantly improved their horticultural knowledge exam scores as a result of participating in the program. Participants also had significant improvements in their environmental attitude scores after completing the program. However, participants attending the Green Brigade program less than 60% of the time had significantly more negative environmental attitude scores than participants attending more frequently. Further analyses showed the program was equally effective at improving environmental attitude scores for all participants regardless of gender, ethnicity, age or grade in school.
... Segments from three different testing instruments were adapted and used to determine the environmental attitudes and environmental locus of control of the participants. The questionnaire was created using existing instruments, drawing questions from the Children's Environmental Response Inventory (CERI; Bunting and Cousins, 1983), an environmental attitude inventory (Cammack et al., 2002a) and the Revised Perceived Environ-mental Control Measure (RPECM; Smith-Sebasto, 1992). A demographic questionnaire for students was included as a cover sheet. ...
... Questions from an environmental attitude inventory (Cammack et al., 2002a) were also used in the development of the research questionnaire. The original test from which questions were drawn included 10 statements. ...
Article
Full-text available
The objectives of this study were to examine an interdisciplinary and experiential approach to environmental education by use of a youth gardening program for third through fifth grade students. In addition, this study evaluated the gardening program's effectiveness on promoting positive environmental attitudes and a high environmental locus of control with children. A questionnaire was developed from three existing instruments and was used to collect information concerning environmental attitudes, locus of control as it related to environmental actions, and demographic information of respondents. No statistically significant differences were found on either variable in comparisons of experimental and control group responses. However, students from both groups exhibited positive environmental attitudes. Demographic comparisons indicated that children with previous gardening experience scored significantly higher on the environmental attitude and environmental locus of control statements when compared with children without gardening experience. Girls scored significantly higher than boys on environmental attitude and environmental locus of control scores. Caucasians scored significantly higher when compared with African-Americans and Hispanics on environmental attitude scores, and Caucasians scored significantly higher when compared with African-Americans on environmental locus of control scores.
... Compared with recidivism rates of those who served their community service in nonhorticultural outdoor environments [9.1% (5)], nonhorticultural indoor community service environments were reported at a 5.0% [14.1% (13)] higher rate (Table 2). Results from the Cammack et al. (2001) study also showed decreasing recidivism rates within the juvenile offender population as a result of being engaged with horticulture. ...
Article
Full-text available
The average cost of housing a single inmate in the United States is roughly 31,286peryear,bringingthetotalaveragecoststatesspendoncorrectionstomorethan31,286 per year, bringing the total average cost states spend on corrections to more than 50 billion per year. Statistics show 1 in every 34 adults in the United States is under some form of correctional supervision; and after 3 years, more than 4 in 10 prisoners return to custody. The purpose of this study was to determine the availability of opportunities for horticultural community service and whether there were differences in incidences of recurrences of offenses/recidivism of offenders completing community service in horticultural vs. nonhorticultural settings. Data were collected through obtaining offender profile probation revocation reports, agency records, and community service supervision reports for one county in Texas. The sample included both violent and nonviolent and misdemeanor and felony offenders. Offenders who completed their community service in horticultural or nonhorticultural outdoor environments showed lower rates of recidivism compared with offenders who completed their community service in nonhorticultural indoor environments and those who had no community service. Demographic comparisons found no difference in incidence of recidivism in comparisons of offenders based on gender, age, and the environment in which community service was served. In addition, no difference was shown in incidence of recidivism in comparisons based on offenders with misdemeanor vs. felony charges. The results and information gathered support the continued notion that horticultural activities can play an important role in influencing an offender’s successful reentry into society.
... The possibility of future employment due to increased horticultural knowledge is considered to be a benefit of youth community gardening programs (Cammack, Waliczek, & Zajicek, 2002). Thus, horticultural knowledge increases their employability and independence. ...
Article
Full-text available
The Youth for EcoAction (YEA) program is a project of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Winnipeg involving at-risk youth. This community development program focuses on urban agriculture and community gardening and was developed using the Circle of Courage pedagogy. The program was analyzed through participatory methods. YEA youth interns built skills, improved self-esteem, increased environmental awareness, enhanced food security, and fostered their own social networks to help counter the attraction to gangs and dealing with other issues. Benefits were also felt at a broader community level, through positive environmental, social, and physical changes. Youth-serving agencies, community development organizations, and government policy makers could look to the YEA as a model for youth empowerment and community revitalization. Le programme Youth for EcoAction (YEA) pour les jeunes à risque est l’œuvre des Clubs garçons et filles de Winnipeg. Il met l’accent sur l’agriculture urbaine et le jardinage communautaire. Les Clubs ont développé YEA en recourant à la pédagogie du Cercle du courage. Pour analyser ce programme, les auteurs de cet article ont employé une méthode participative. Pour les jeunes, les bénéfices de YEA incluent le développement de compétences, une sécurité alimentaire accrue et la formation de réseaux qui les aident à échapper à la tentation des gangs et autres problèmes. À un niveau communautaire, les bénéfices comprennent des améliorations environnementales, sociales et physiques. Pour les agences jeunesse, les organismes de développement communautaire et les stratèges gouvernementaux, le programme YEA peut servir de modèle d’autonomisation des jeunes et de revitalisation de la communauté.
... ~ Excerpt from Researching Lived Experience by Max Van Manen, 1990 Do young children form important and needed connections with the natural and built world on urban school grounds, or is this just a myth? Children's connections with nature and outdoor environments have been explored through a variety of disciplines which include but are not limited to the following: environmental psychology (Chawla, 1988;Chawla, 1998;Chawla, 2006;Hay, 1998;Hung, 2004;Libman, 2007), human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1977;Bronfenbrenner, 1999;Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994;Piaget, 1952;Vygotsky, 1978), landscape architecture (Francis, 1995;Hart, 1979;Moore & Wong, 1997), geography and urban planning (Pothukuchi, 2004;Ulrich, 1993), horticulture (Cammack, Waliczek, & Zajicek, 2002a& 2002bFlagler, 1995;Klemmer, Waliczek, & Zajicek, 2005), social ecology (Kellert & Wilson, 1993), resource management (Brooks, 2003;Kyle, Graefe, Manning, & Bacon, 2004;Kyle, Graefe, & Manning, 2005), natural resources and environmental sciences , biology and human evolution (Wilson, 1984), and environmental education (Mayer-Smith, Bartosh, Peterat, 2007). And yet, according to Kellert, "Despite this growing body of evidence, the reality remains that data on the child and nature relationship continues to be fragmentary, sparse, and often based on methodologically limited research" (2009, p.3). ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
“Do young children form important and needed connections with the natural world on school grounds, or is this just a myth?” This paper represents a critical review of biophilia and place attachment literature – both important areas of research in need of a new approach. Researchers Burgess (2009), Chawla (2007), Howell (2003), Kahn (2002), Kellert (2009), and others have called for a need for rigorously controlled, yet rich and experiential, research which advances underlying theories of child-nature connections. Likewise, place attachment research has been conducted largely with adults and needs a more theoretically sound approach to how and why youth attach to certain places beyond favorite places studies. These two areas of research are closely related and have been studied using ethnographic methods (Brooks, 2003; Tuan, 1977), quantitative methods (Harvey, 1989; Stedman, 2002; Vaske & Kobrin, 2001; Williams, 2000), and mixed-methods (Burgess, 2009; Francis, 1995; Hart, 1979; Moore & Wong, 1997). However, few studies have attempted to combine a measure of scientific rigor with a sensitive portrayal of Latino and Latina children’s experience on school grounds. A new interpretation of schoolyards and gardens through the eyes of low-income urban youth is critical if we are to make advancements in child-nature relationship research. General assumptions about youth and benefits of revitalized school grounds abound in gardening and schoolyard literature with little regard to place attachment or biophilia theory. Mixed-methods are recommended to research predominantly Latino urban children’s connections to school ground environments. Keywords: biophilia, biophobia, nature, place attachment, place dependence, place identity, child-nature relationships, environmental concerns and responsibility, urban youth, children, playgrounds, school grounds, schoolyards, literature review, green infrastructure, biotic and abiotic communities
Article
Full-text available
With the rapid development of information and sensory technology, the construction mode of universities and the planning of campus public spaces are confronting great challenges and opportunities. It also brings about new perspectives for reconsidering the relationship between users’ perceptions and the campus environment. This paper reviews the research on the perception of university public spaces over the past 20 years and summarizes the research hotspots by using co-citation analysis, co-occurrence analysis, and burst detection analysis through CiteSpace software. The results demonstrate that the overall development of this field experienced three stages: the initial development stage (2000–2007), the rapid growth stage (2008–2017), and the stable development stage (2018–2021). In terms of research content, hotspot studies are emphasized from the perspectives of thermal perceptions, health impact perception, spatial configuration perception, and user activity perception of on-campus space. In addition, this literature review concluded the emerging research tendencies and new quantification methods in recent years, proposing an enormous potential for quantifying campus space research based on new perceptual technologies. It also encourages the research and optimal design of campus spaces for a more student-oriented campus environment based on the study of the student’s perception of the spaces.
Thesis
Gardening has long found its way into the American prison, but, in recent years, prison garden programs have achieved an unusual measure of popularity. In the perpetual reform of the penitentiary, this represents a programmatic turn in carceral administration back toward the “rehabilitation” of incarcerated people, the garden expected to “transform” them to reduce recidivism rates. This turn coincides with the rise of prison greening and sustainability initiatives, which are symbolically and politically linked to urban greening and sustainability. These moves present many contradictory implications which place the prison garden squarely within a dialectical process of exploitation and resistance. On the one hand, the (un)sustainable prison garden is permeated and limited by the logics of green racial capitalism: racialized accumulation by sustainability capital; a socioecological fix, which provides institutional legitimation through symbolic capital and justification for racist recidivism narratives; the depoliticization of carceral violence by the prison/urban greening alliance; and nefarious forms of carceral discipline and control. At the same time, prison gardens present radical possibilities through moments of resistance by: facilitating the survival and humanization of incarcerated people; incorporating tenets of a critical pedagogy; and developing carceral food justice practice. Given that this is a severely underexplored topic, I attempted to explore a breadth of possibilities and limitations in depth, opening up theoretical and empirical insights to inform future research endeavors. To this end, I draw insights from scholarship on urban political ecology, racial capitalism, carceral geography, food justice, and critical education studies.
Article
Full-text available
Food waste is one of the most abundant materials contributing to land fills in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates 96% of uneaten food ends up in land fills. Food and other organic wastes generate potent greenhouse gases in the atmosphere precipitating global climate change. College campus cafeterias generate a large amount of food waste and some universities are making efforts to capture and compost food waste. The purpose of this study was to measure the relationship between participation in a university composting program and students’ environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control (refers to the belief that an individual’s actions play a direct role in the result of any affair), compost knowledge, and compost attitudes. Undergraduate and graduate students were given a survey, which included an environmental attitude scale, an environmental locus of control inventory and sections where students reported their composting habits, knowledge of the composting process, and how composting made them feel. Atotal of 660 surveys were collected from two universities, one that acted as the treatment and the other as the control group. The results indicated a statistically significant difference between the school with a composting program and the school without a composting program on the variables of environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control, and composting knowledge. Furthermore, composting attitudes were positively related to environmental attitudes, environmental locus of control, and compost knowledge at the university with a composting program. Demographic comparisons found differences within the treatment group on the composting attitude and knowledge and environmental attitude inventories but not locus of control. © 2016, American Society for Horticultural Science. All rights reserved.
Chapter
This chapter examines children’s affinity for the natural world, benefits for children from contact with nature, and how programs for ecological restoration and caring for plants and animals can promote young people’s resilience and recovery after conflict and disasters. Masten (2001, p. 228) defines resilience in childhood as ‘good outcomes in spite of threats to adaptation or development’. It is not a special attribute that makes some children invulnerable to adversity, but what Masten calls the ‘ordinary magic’ that happens when children manage to find essential resources for healthy development even in difficult circumstances. The literature on resilience has emphasized the importance of caring social relationships and supportive institutions like effective schools, not recognizing that children can draw strength and healing from the natural world as well. Most of the literature on helping children affected by war and natural disasters also neglects this potential. This chapter demonstrates the value of children’s relationships with nature and the importance of integrating healing green spaces into programs to help children recover after disasters and conflict.
Article
Full-text available
The many-faceted relationships that exist between plants and humans play an integral role on the development of our civilisation that goes merely beyond some productive aspects, involving other scientific sectors like anthropology, ethnobotany, geography, art and environmental sciences and, above all, the group of social sciences like psychology and sociology. Comprehension of the psychological, physiological and social responses of people towards plants can be a valid tool for the improvement of physical and psychic conditions, both of single individuals and of whole communities. Though some very ancient references are present in the literature, the study of these aspects of fundamental importance has stimulated the interest of several researchers mainly in the last 10-15 years, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries and the United States, producing, as a consequence, a substantial bibliography. So-called horticultural therapy is not a new therapy. It can be done at home, in either public or private gardens, in green spaces or in structures for the cultivation of plants attached to hospitals, rehabilitation clinics and hospices. It has, therefore, great flexibility and, probably, its great therapeutic value resides in the fact that it can be a preventive medicine and a therapy of support to traditional medical treatments, contributing to the harmonic exploitation of residual potentialities and to a more structurally defined personality of the patient.
Article
Full-text available
As human pressures on the environment increase and as conflicting demands on education become focused, schools have a greater responsibility to educate children to care for their environment. Results from this study demonstrated that students who were involved in the actual propagation and restoration of ecosystems, and who had positive experiences in doing so, were more likely to have positive environmental attitudes.
Article
Full-text available
The Green Brigade horticultural program is a community-based treatment and diversion program for juvenile offenders. The objective of this study was to determine if participation in the Green Brigade program improved the self-esteem, locus of control, interpersonal relationships and attitude toward school of participating juvenile offenders. Participants in the Green Brigade program had significantly lower scores than the comparative group on measures of self-esteem, interpersonal relationships and attitude toward school prior to and after completion of the Green Brigade program. Although the Green Brigade participants' scores were significantly lower than the comparative group's scores, the means were still considered 'normal' for their age group. However, adolescents participating in coed sessions, where the hands-on activities involved plant materials, displayed more positive interpersonal relationship scores than participants in an all male session where the hands-on activities focused on the installation of hardscape materials and a lack of plant materials. No significant differences were found in rates of repeated crimes of juvenile offenders participating in the Green Brigade program when compared to juvenile offenders participating in traditional probationary programming.
Article
Project GREEN (Garden Resources for Environmental Education Now) is a garden program designed to help teachers integrate environmental education into their classroom using a hands-on tool, the garden. The objectives of this research project were to 1) develop an interdisciplinary garden activity guide to help teachers integrate environmental education into their curricula and 2) evaluate whether children developed positive environmental attitudes by participating in the activities. Students participating in the Project GREEN garden program had more positive environmental attitude scores than those students who did not participate. Second-grade students in the experimental and control groups had more positive environmental attitudes than fourth-grade students. In addition, this research found a significant correlation between the number of outdoor related activities students had experienced and their environmental attitudes.
Article
Quantitative evaluation of horticulture vocational-therapy programs is becoming more and more critical as professionals in the area of people-plant interactions try to document the value of their programs. Evaluation tools to assess self-development of individuals studying such factors as self-esteem, life satisfaction, and locus of control have long been used in the social science disciplines. Many of these tools, either in their original forms or with some adaptations, can be successfully used to measure changes in self-development of individuals participating in horticulture programs.
Article
Increased knowledge about the environment is assumed to change environmental attitudes, and both environmental knowledge and attitudes are assumed to influence environmental policy. However, little research has focused on public environmental knowledge or the relationship between knowledge and environmental attitudes. This paper uses telephone survey data from 680 Kentucky residents to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, this analysis examines how environmental knowledge and attitudes are related sociodemographic factors (gender, age, education, income and residence). As in similar research, the respondents to this survey did not score well on the measures of environmental knowledge. Environmental knowledge is found to be consistently and positively related to environmental attitudes, although the relationship is not especially strong. With the correlation of knowledge and attitudes, the low level of environmental knowledge has disturbing implications for environmental policy.