An Analysis of Tree Species Planted in Elementary School Gardens in Western Gyeongnam Area

서부 경남 지역의 초등학교에 식재된 목본 식물 분석

This study is to find out how well elementary school gardens work as places of observation learning. We compared the tree species planted in elementary school gardens with those which appeared in the science textbooks of the 7th Korean National Curriculum. The number of tree species are 60 throughout all the grades, specifically; 43 in the third grade, 22 in the fifth grade, 16 in the first grade, 15 in the second grade, 8 in the sixth grade, and 5 in the fourth grade, respectively. Their frequency of appearance (hereafter referred to as 'appearance frequency') throughout all the grades is 175, and the maximum frequency is 62 in the third grade. Of particular note is the fact that the appearance frequency in one grade was very high, meaning that a repeat study will not be conducted. The total number of tree species counted in the study was 13,028 and consisted of 167 species in 52 families. Only 23% of the total planted tree species, that is, 38 tree species appeared in the textbooks, so the ratio of the practical usage of school gardens was revealed to be low. In the school gardens, there are only an average of about 16 tree species per school. The fewest number of species in one school was 9 and the most was 22. The native species were 74 and the non-native species were 93. This means that almost all the planted species do not relate to observation learning in the textbooks. The 22 tree species among 60 species in the textbooks were not planted in the gardens. In conclusion, the degree of utilization of almost all the elementary school gardens examined during this investigation was very low.