Community Gardening for Active Citizenship: Initial Report

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Community Gardening for Active Citizenship
Initial Report

• P. J. Frable1 ND RN L. Dart2 PhD RD LD
• Texas Christian University,
• 1Harris College of Nursing Health Sciences
  2Department of Nutritional Sciences

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Abstract

• Public health nursings core professional values,
  knowledge, and competencies are congruent with
  civic literacy skills necessary for active
  citizenship. Civic engagement is necessary but
  insufficient to develop the social capital
  necessary for collective action and social
  change. Participating in service learning and
  community based participatory research can
  enhance public health nursing students learning.
  
• Public health nursing and nutritional sciences
  faculty and students collaborated on a service
  learning project with the Tarrant County Resource
  Connection and Master Gardeners Association to
  develop a demonstration community garden. The
  Resource Connection is a unique public-private
  collaboration that brings together more than 40
  agencies and their clients on a single campus.
  Community gardening has the potential to enhance
  public health and create social capital and may
  help students move from civic engagement to
  active citizenship.
• To date students have completed community
  assessments, helped build and promote the
  demonstration garden, and begun educational
  outreach to an elementary school located in a
  historically ethnically diverse, low income,
  urban community at risk for food insecurity.
  Periodically, students complete entries in
  Journey Mapping, an online program that allows
  participants to complete reflective journals and
  rate their progress on milestones specific to
  their learning objectives. Results related to
  developing the community campus partnership, use
  of Journey Mapping for student reflection and
  assessment, and effects of community gardening on
  students, participating organizations and
  communities will be reported.

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Objectives

• Describe service learning as a teaching strategy
  to enhance practicum learning experience
• Describe a community based participatory
  research, service learning initiative for
  fostering the citizenship model of agent for
  social justice and civic literacy skills among
  public health nursing students

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Background
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Inadequate physical activity, inadequate fruit
and vegetable consumption, and food insecurity
are associated with overweight and obesity

• Adequate consumption of fruits and vegetables
• Daily moderate to vigorous physical activity
  along with strength building several times weekly
• Food security adequate quality and quantity of
  calories for their activities of daily living

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Logic ModelCommunity Gardening for Active
Citizenship
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Civic Literacy

• Successful democratic societies require active
  citizenship
• Citizenship models Citizen as responsible
  person, citizen as participant, citizen as agent
  for social justice, citizen as helper
• Four categories of requisite civic skills
• Collective decision making
• Communication
• Critical thinking
• Organization
• Civic skills lack consistent definitions and
  measurement criteria

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Service Learning

• is a structured learning experience that
  combines community service with preparation and
  reflection. Students engaged in service learning
  provide community service in response to
  community-identified concerns and learn about the
  context in which service is provided, the
  connection between their service and academic
  coursework, and their roles as citizens.
  (Seifer, 1998)

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Service Learning Characteristics

• Balancing/negotiating service and learning
  objectives
• Emphasizing reciprocal learning, community
  concerns, and broad determinants of health
• Involving community partners
• Connecting practice and theory and fostering
  critical thinking through reflection
• Emphasizing development of citizenship skills and
  achieving social change. Understanding the self
  as a health professional and citizen in larger
  societal context (Seifer, 1998)

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Service Learning and Civic Literacy

• Service and community engagement are insufficient
  to prepare active citizens and foster collective
  action necessary for social change
• Service learning must include experiences that
  support systemic political or policy related
  understanding and engagement to prepare people to
  address complex challenges in increasingly
  diverse democracy
• Civic engagement requires a catalyst to develop
  the social capital necessary for collective
  action and social change

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Community Based Participatory Research

• A collaborative approach to research that
  equitably involves a variety of partners in all
  aspects of research (Israel, 1998)
• Recognizes community as unit of identity
• Builds on community strengths and resources
• Facilitates collaborative and equitable
  involvement of all partners through research
• Integrates knowledge and intervention for mutual
  benefits among partners
• Promotes co-learning and empowering process that
  attend to social inequalities
• Involves a cyclical and iterative process
• Addresses health from positive and ecological
  perspectives
• Disseminates findings and knowledge gained to all
  partners
• Involves long term commitment by all partners

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Community Gardens

• Places where community members work together to
  plant, maintain, and harvest a communal place in
  their neighborhoods.
• May grow vegetables, herbs, fruits, ornamental or
  flowering plants
• Challenges include inadequate or unreliable water
  supplies, poor security, or inability to count on
  space being available throughout the growing
  season
• Also called urban gardens or urban farming may
  include school gardens

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In Community Gardening for Active Citizenship,

• community based participatory research serves as
  the catalyst that helps civic engagement and
  service learning create social capital

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Community Gardens

• Peer-reviewed literature limited, but suggests
  community gardens
• Increase access to and consumption of fruits and
  vegetable
• Improve food security
• Increase physical activity, especially strength
  building activity
• Alter community spaces in positive ways
• Create social capital
• Help people develop job-related skills

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Community Gardening and Public Health

• Community gardening process offers numerous
  opportunities to develop skills including the
  four civic literacy skills
• Collective decision making
• Communication
• Critical thinking
• Organization
• Community gardening offers opportunities for
  students to utilize the standards of public
  health nursing practice (ANA, 2007)

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Program Description
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Tarrant County Resource Connection (RC)

• Mission Provide employment, education, health
  and human services in a single environment that
  allows County citizens to efficiently utilize
  resources that promote self-sufficiency,
  self-reliance, and wellness
• Unique public private collaboration operating as
  self-supporting entity of County government

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Tarrant County Resource Connection (RC)

• 328-acre campus on regular bus line with
  intra-campus shuttle service
• Seventeen buildings (343,344 square feet) provide
  office space for gt40 different programs serving
  gt1,000 people daily
• County serves as lead agency, providing overall
  administrative management and round-the-clock
  security for tenants
• Director reports to the County Administrator

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Tarrant CountyMaster Gardeners Association (MGA)

• Non-profit organization with 325 active,
  certified members
• Part of Texas AgriLife (Texas Cooperative
  Extension)
• Requires minimum of 50 hours of instruction plus
  50 volunteer hours in first year after course
  work
• Two Master Gardeners serve as main consultants
  and contacts for this project

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Demonstration Community Garden

• dedicated to the creation and maintenance of a
  gardening environment designed to improve the
  health and quality of life for persons of all
  ages and abilities through education and the
  application of current horticultural practices.
• RC contributed 2 acres, ongoing grounds crew,
  water, and security support
• MGA contributed garden expertise, volunteer
  labor, supplies (plants, soil, greenhouse,
  materials for beds)

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Demonstration Community Garden
RC and MGA collaborate. Landscape plan developed. 2005
RC and MGA formally commit to initiate project 2006
TCU Nursing and Nutritional Sciences faculty initiate relationship with Garden partners 2006, Fall
Nursing and Nutritional Sciences students begin participation in project 2007, Spring
Students continue participation. Collaborate with Nash Elementary to establish School Community Garden and Composting Project 2007, Fall
Nursing and Nutritional Sciences students engage in Garden Outreach initiatives 2008, Spring
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Nursing Courses

• Community Health Nursing Practicum
• Senior II BSN students
• Eleven to 12 weeks, one practicum day per week
• Spring and Fall 2007
• Public Health Nursing rotation, Reflective
  Practice III
• Accelerated Baccalaureate Nursing Track students
• Spring 2008, 9 practicum days completed in one
  month
• Both courses
• Population focused
• Interventions dependent on faculty and student
  actions

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Nutritional Sciences Courses

• Supervised Practice in General Dietetics
• Junior Coordinated Program in Dietetics students
• Six weeks, 10-12 hours each week
• Fall 2007
• Supervised Practice in Community Nutrition
• Senior Coordinated Program in Dietetics students
• Seven weeks, 10-12 hours each week
• Spring 2007 and 2008

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Spring 2007

• Nursing and Nutritional Sciences students help
  establish garden
• Build beds, establish rose berm, move soil, help
  with rain water harvesting system
• Nursing students plan and implement Opening Day
  event to promote garden
• Nutritional Sciences students complete initial
  outreach for Tarrant Area Food Bank, WIC, and
  Senior Citizen Services

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Fall 2007

• Nursing and Nutritional Sciences students
  complete Community Gardener certification,
  curriculum designed by MGA, in consultation with
  TCU faculty, specifically for TCU students
• Nursing students implement Build Day, working
  with school children to build three raised beds
  and establish composting program
• Nutritional Sciences students follow nursing
  students, providing classroom education on
  healthful eating and building additional beds

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Spring 2008 - Nursing

• Two student sections completed Community
  Gardening certification
• Lessons
• Soil composition, fertilizers, mulching and
  watering
• Rain water harvesting
• Composting
• Plant propagation
• Native plants
• Entomology

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Spring 2008Demonstration Garden Cohort

• Contributed to garden infrastructure composting,
  planting, building 3 new beds
• Engaged pregnant and parenting adolescents in
  adopting 4 beds, planting flowers and vegetables,
  and walking to garden regularly
• Connected Senior Citizen Service clients with MGA
  for container gardening classes
• Established initial outreach with MHMR and
  Veterans Affairs
• Provided in-service on therapeutic and enabling
  gardens for MGA interns building enabling garden

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Spring 2008Nash Elementary School Cohort

• Planned, implemented, evaluated and documented
  Science and Gardening Fair for 4th and 5th grade
  students and their families
• Assisted in teaching 5th grade science to help
  prepare students for TAKS and build relationships
  with students
• Five learning stations at fair
• Digestive system
• Water cycle and soil composition
• Plant propagation
• Photosynthesis and fruit and veggie critters
• Tasting garden products and making better food
  choices

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You Are What You Eat Science and Gardening Fair
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You Are What You Eat Science and Gardening Fair
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Results
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Research Questions

• How effective is community gardening for
  fostering civic skills in collective decision
  making, communication, critical thinking, and
  organization?
• Does engagement of students as partners in CBPR
  promote their development as active citizens?
• How effective is the partnership among TCU
  faculty, TCU students, and the Demonstration
  Garden in achieving study objectives?

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Evaluation Plan

• Journey Mapping event maps (Nutrition) and
  journals (Nursing), 2007
• Students meeting course objectives
• Faculty student conferences
• Action plan progress
• CDC Framework for Program Evaluation in Public
  Health, Donabedians Structure Process
  Outcome framework, ecological framework, and CBPR
  principles

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Service Learning Results - Students

• Met course objectives
• Applied learning to personal lives
• Contributed to community-identified needs at
  Demonstration Garden and Nash Elementary School
• Traditional Track (2007) had more difficulty in
  understanding community gardening as mechanism
  for promoting public health than Accelerated
  (2008)
• Status of garden and CBPR
  relationship may contribute to this

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Civic Literacy Results - Students

• Participation increased nursing students
  awareness of civic literacy skills and
  self-reported assessment of these skills
• Fall 2007 students wrote Chancellor about ways
  TCU campus could incorporate rain water
  harvesting and composting
• Spring 2008 students provided greatest outreach
  and response to community partners

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Journey Mapping Journals Fall 2007
To what degree do you have mastery of these skills? Competent Oct 07 Not Applicable Oct 07 Competent Nov 07
Think constructively about how to improve political/civic life 20 50 70
Listen, judge, discuss, confer, and act to improve political/civic life 10 50 70
Work as a team 30 70 100
Explain, analyze, and synthesize information about political/civic life 30 40 80
Understand perspectives of others in the community 40 60 80
Build cooperative relationships/Interact with others to promote personal and common interest/Achieve compromise 20 70 90
Evaluate, take, defend positions on public events and issues 20 50 90
Identify and solve problems in context of conflict 30 50 80
Take on real responsibilities and challenging tasks 40 60 80
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Civic Literacy Results - Faculty

• Made connections between public health nursing
  and civic literacy more visible
• Facilitated more conversations with students
  about social justice, U.S. history and law, and
  American (US) narratives past and present
• Included guest lecture on Constitution in
  companion Concepts course

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Community Based Participatory Research Results

• The community-campus partnership developed for
  this project seems just now ready to begin
  serious dialogue about research opportunities
• Educate partners about value of the research
  component and encourage their participation
• Recruit Texas AgriLife as a partner
• Facilitate nursing students interest in
  participating as research partners

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Future Directions
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Next Steps

• Formalize CBPR relationship
• Proposal writing
• Continue to support outreach activities at
  Demonstration Garden and Nash Elementary School

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Thanks to Our Community Partners

• Tarrant County Resource Connection
• Tarrant County Master Gardeners
• Nash Elementary School
• Senior II Nursing Students in the Community
  Health Nursing Practicum, Spring 2007 and Fall
  2008
• Accelerated Baccalaureate Nursing Students in the
  Public Health Nursing rotation, Spring 2008
• Junior and Senior students in Coordinated Program
  in Dietetics

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Acknowledgement of Funding Sources

• Center for Civic Literacy, Texas Christian
  University
• Center for Community Engagement and Service
  Learning, Texas Christian University
• Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences,
  Texas Christian University (in-kind support)

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For more information contact

• Pamela Jean Frable ND RN
• Associate Professor, Nursing
• Harris College of Nursing and Health
  SciencesTexas Christian University
• P.frable_at_tcu.edu
• Lyn Dart PhD RD LD
• Associate Professor
• Department of Nutritional Sciences Texas
  Christian University
• L.dart_at_tcu.edu

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