Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2015, 3, 39-43
Published Online April 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/jss
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2015.34005
How to cite this paper: Stavrianos, A. and Spanoudaki, A. (2015) The Impact of an Environmental Educational Program of a
School Garden on Pupils with Intellectual Disabilities—A Comparative Approach. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 3, 39-43.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2015.34005
The Impact of an Environmental Educational
Program of a School Garden on Pupils with
Intellectual Disabilities—A Comparative
Approach
Alexandros Stavrianos
1
, Alexia Spanoudaki
2
1
Faculty of Social Care & Education, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, England
2
Faculty of Preschool Education, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece
Email: alex_rds@hotmail.com
Received 4 March 2015; accepted 28 March 2015; published 31 March 2015
Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY).
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Abstract
The following research describes an attempt to combine environmental education through outdoor
activities in Special Education. It examines the use of a school garden as a learning environment in
Special Education by looking at the stances and opinions of 10 pupils, diagnosed with mild to mod-
erate intellectual disability, towards Environmental Education and prognoses barriers that may
occur in the learning process. Specifically, the study focuses on the skills and subject knowledge
those students have cultivated through a project called “School Garden”, highlighting the ideas pu-
pils have, regarding the position of environmental education in their school curriculum. Using de-
scriptive statistical analysis to compare the two groups of pupils, this research suggests the further
practice of Environmental Education in Special Education. The research took place in two Special
Education Primary Schools in Greece, while the data were collected using semi-structured inter-
views. The main conclusions of the research were that students who participated in their school’s
environmental educational program seem to be more familiarized with a range of concepts related
to the environment and possess skills linked directly to Environmental Education in relation to
their peers that did not engage in the project, while pupils who participated in the “School Garden”,
unlike their peers, perceived outdoor activities of their school as part of the learning process, in
formal education. This study proposes further research to take place in the area of Environmental
Education and Special Education.
Keywords
Biophilia, Environmental Education, Inclusion, Special Education, School Garden