Regenerating soil, soul, and society : garden-based sustainability pedagogy for incarcerated adult learners
(Book - Regular Print)

ProQuest Number: 10600750.

Advisor: Pramod Parajuli.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sustainability Education from Prescott College.

Dissertation (Ph. D.),Prescott College,2017.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-172)

"The United States prison system presently incarcerates approximately 2.3 million citizens. There has been a rise in support and mandates for educational programming, which provides prisoners with career and technical educational opportunities. The prison education system offers a unique environment to research sustainability education. This research used transformative phenomenological methodology to explore how sustainability education within prison programming for Incarcerated Adult Learners may or may not support Adult Development Theory in practice. An extensive literature review provides theory that supports the author's exploration of the intersection of adult development theory, prison education pedagogy, and garden-based education. Conceptual framework based on Merleau-Ponty's (1948, 2002) theory of life-world themes - lived space, lived time, lived body, lived human relations - is considered in the milieu of the prisoners' lived experience. The researcher explored the lived experience of 10 prisoners enrolled in Central Arizona College's Sustainability Agriculture Food Production program located at Arizona State Prison, Florence Complex. Research methodology included the use of StAGES adult development assessment, a general survey assessing the prisoner's farming experience (past and present), semi-structured interviews, narrative journals, and observations. A thematic approach to data analysis was used to interpret the transformative learning associated with the phenomenological philosophy of the prisoner's Earth-based experiences. A concluding chapter provides a synthesis of results and recommendations for future research."--leaf iv.