Using School Gardening as a Vehicle for Critical and Creative Thinking in Health Education

Overview & Synopsis

This strategy is to provide health education teacher candidates with critical and creative thinking tools to explore gardening as a vehicle to integrate health education content with other subjects. According to the Competency-Based Framework for the Health Education Specialist (2010a), entry-level health educators should have skills and competencies needed to make connections between learning content and skills, as well as develop a process for integrating health education into other programs. The objectives of this strategy will enable health education teacher candidates to: (1) develop an integrative approach to teaching health education through school gardening, (2) explore the use of picture books for understanding the integrative nature of health education topics, and (3) analyze the relationship between health education and other subject areas taught in a preK-12 curriculum.