MSc

The study entitled ‘influence of school vegetable gardens on the students and
teachers of Thiruvananthapuram district: An expository analysis’ was conducted in
Thiruvananthapuram district that involved 130 respondents with 10 students and three
teachers each from 10 schools involved in school vegetable garden programme during the
period, 2015-2017. The study was done to determine the influence of vegetable gardens in
terms of attitudes, to assess the level of knowledge on vegetable gardening, delineating the
benefits, training needs, constraints and strategies as perceived by the school students and
teachers. Four variables were purposively selected along with thirteen independent
variables through judges rating and included in the study. The attitude of school students
and teachers towards gardening and garden activities was selected as the dependent
variable.
On analysis of data, it was found that majority of students involved in school
gardening activities belonged to 14 and 15 age group and were studying in 7th and 8th
standard. In case of teachers, majority (56.77%) of them belonged to above mean age (44
years) group and all the teachers’ possessed B.Ed. or M.Ed. degrees. It was heartening to
notice that 40 per cent of teachers had agriculture has their secondary occupation however
53.33 per cent teachers did not have any secondary occupation indicating the need for
extension service to reach schools for educating teachers to engage themselves in
agriculture at home focusing on food and nutritional security and also for generating
additional income through sale of surplus. Most of the students dwelling place belonged to
rural area where as teachers come from urban area and the distance from home to school was
less than 3 km for students and more than 6 km for teachers.
In case of variables, viz., social orientation, social participation, attitude, factors of
influence, mass media exposure and knowledge, the majority of the respondents belonged to
medium category. Newspaper was their main source of information with rank one, followed
by television for both teachers and students. The mean score for variables like level of
volunteering, level of excitement and attitude of teachers was higher than that of students
indicating the mentoring role played by the teachers for managing and maintaining the school
vegetable gardening. With respect to political orientation, the students were politically
sensitive to issues and 60 per cent teachers making it clear that they were not actively
involved in politics but do participate in programmes like ‘environment protection
campaign’ and ‘food security programmes’. The variables namely, dwelling place, political
orientation, personal and social factor, technological factors, mass media exposure and
training needs were positive and significantly correlating with attitude at 5% significance
and benefits at 1% significance. However, students attitude was influenced by age at 1%
significance and class of study, purpose of involvement and training needs (-ve) at 5%
significance. Both teachers and students reported the need for more training and 80-90
per cent fell in the category of high training needs.
The average school vegetable garden area was 18.5 cents and seven out of 10
schools were maintaining vegetable garden in an area of more than or equal to 20 cents.
Majority of the school maintained mixed cropped vegetable garden (80.0%) and 7 out of
10 schools did possess protective fencing. Seventy per cent of the schools were irrigating
their vegetable gardens daily and 80.0 per cent of the schools used well water for irrigation.
60.0 per cent of the schools had financial support from government and 40.0 per cent of
the schools from school management or PTA funds. 14 different vegetables were grown
in school vegetable gardens and the most dominant was okra (100.0%), amaranthus
(60.0%), tomato (50.0%), cowpea (50.0%) and cucumber (40%).
The top three constraints as perceived by students and teachers were ‘the high
input cost, lack of voluntary participation of student’s, lack of garden maintenance during
holidays and vacation. Important strategies to be adopted for sustenance of school
vegetable gardening as perceived by students and teachers were, availing good quality
inputs at required time and amount, alternative arrangements for garden maintenances in
summer vacations, and making agriculture as a compulsory subject from upper primary
level to high school.