Performance analysis of school vegetable gardens in Palakkad district
| dc.contributor.advisor | Mercykutty, M J | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ajit, T G | |
| dc.contributor.author | KAU | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-12-17T11:16:36Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-12-17T11:16:36Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
| dc.description | MSc | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | A school vegetable garden is an educational strategy to attract students towards gardening activities. The garden engages students by providing a dynamic environment where they can observe, discover, experiment, nurture, and learn. It provides opportunities for young minds to understand the basic lessons of agriculture and develop an affinity towards it. Kerala state Department of Agriculture Development and Farmers’ Welfare has been implementing school vegetable garden programme under ‘Vegetable Development Programme’ with the major objectives to mobilize the student community into the field of agriculture and to make them aware of safe to eat food production. With this background, the present research was undertaken to explore the effectiveness of school vegetable garden as perceived by students, school authorities and extension personnel. The knowledge level and attitude of students were studied along with their association with personal and socio economic characteristics. The impact of school vegetable garden on food consumption pattern of students was also analyzed. The study was carried out in Nenmara and Kollengode blocks of Palakkad district. One school each was chosen from the three selected panchayats of each block. The six panchayats were Nenmara, Pallasana, and Elavanchery from Nenmara block and Koduvayur, Muthalamada, and Vadavannur from Kollengode. Two stage random sampling procedure was adopted. The respondents included 30 students and one teacher each from six schools, three extension personnel each from six panchayats and 30 parents and thus making the total sample size to 234. All the selected schools had functional school vegetable gardens and were practicing activities either through agriculture or nature clubs. The perceived effectiveness of school vegetable garden by teachers and extension personnel revealed that improvement in environmental stewardship was found to be the most important outcome while the development of life skills was perceived as most significant by the students. The knowledge and attitude towards school vegetable garden were at medium level for majority of the students. Among the personal and socio-economic characteristics studied, participation in extracurricular activities displayed the highest positive correlation with both knowledge and attitude. Age and social orientation had positive correlation with both knowledge and attitude while students’ class of study and extent of volunteering were positively correlated with knowledge and achievement motivation with attitude. Kruskal Wallis H test was employed to identify the group variability among schools for knowledge level, attitude and perceived effectiveness .The results indicated significant variation among schools with respect to knowledge and attitude while no remarkable difference was observed for perceived effectiveness. Regarding the career aspirations of students, majority opted for science education. The perceived changes in preference in food consumption were also studied. Preference towards leafy vegetables was perceived as the greatest felt change. Among the vegetables, potato was the most consumed one (97.98 %) and least consumed was colocasia (41.76 %).After involving in school vegetable garden, students showed a slight increase in consumption of amaranthus and solanaceous vegetables. It was found that all the students involved in school vegetable garden were maintaining a home garden with a few vegetable crops. The major vegetables in the home gardens were chilli, brinjal, vegetable cowpea and amaranthus. The most important benefits perceived by parents due to the involvement of children in vegetable garden were improvement in environmental stewardships and personal development. The constraints faced by students were about the time spent for garden activities and difficulty in maintaining during vacation. While inadequate fund was the major constraint faced by the teachers, the extension personnel felt the scarcity of land for cultivation as the most important one. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | 174828 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810156858 | |
| dc.keywords | Agricultural Extension | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | English | en_US |
| dc.pages | 92p. | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Department of Agricultural extension, College of Horticulture, Vellanikkara | en_US |
| dc.sub | Agricultural Extension | en_US |
| dc.theme | School vegetable gardens in Palakkad district | en_US |
| dc.these.type | M.Sc | en_US |
| dc.title | Performance analysis of school vegetable gardens in Palakkad district | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |