Designing collaborative inquiry for educational, environmental & social benefits: A case study of cover crop research with Brooklyn gardeners

Background/Question/Methods:

Agricultural extension models that involve farmers in collaborative inquiry (CI) have proven valuable in developing the knowledge, skills, and communities of practice that support ecologically-based management.  However, little research has addressed the specific methodological dimensions of effective social learning for sustainable agriculture, or the unique possibilities and challenges of agricultural education in an urban gardening context.  Through a case study of a two-year CI project to learn about the ecosystem services of cover crops with urban community gardeners in Brooklyn, NY, we address the question: How can CI be organized and facilitated in an urban community gardening context to achieve educational, environmental and social benefits?  The CI process involved engaging gardeners in defining goals and research questions, designing field experiments, and planting and monitoring cover crops over two field seasons.  We draw on field notes, narrative interviews, and group evaluation sessions to identify project design considerations that may have contributed to positive outcomes and reflect on the key challenges of implementing CI in an urban gardening context, as well as potential strategies for addressing these challenges.

Results/Conclusions:

A number of practices contributed to educational, environmental and social benefits in our CI effort.  Engaging gardeners in monitoring cover crop plantings using checklists of agroecological indicators strengthened their knowledge of ecological processes (e.g., nitrogen fixation, weed suppression) and adaptive management skills (e.g., systematic observation, applying monitoring knowledge to improve practice).  Facilitating opportunities for participants to share their knowledge with others (e.g., field days) supported leadership development.  Sustained, in-person support enabled gardeners to implement cover cropping practices with environmental and social benefits, such as improved vegetable harvests with little or no chemical fertilizer.  Challenges included: negotiating power dynamics in order to address community-defined goals and priorities within the constraints of a discipline-specific dissertation project; structuring participation to tap the educational potential of engagement in multiple stages of the research process, while limiting participants’ time commitment to a feasible level; maintaining a learning community between participating gardens; providing sufficient garden-by-garden research and education support with limited funding for community-based partners; and designing accessible record-keeping forms and processes. Despite its challenges, CI in urban gardening contexts may develop knowledge and skills that support improved stewardship practices and community capacity to address broader environmental and social goals.