Johanna Lochner
The content on this page was translated automatically.
Education and educational research in the agricultural sciences
Johanna Lochner - BSc Organic Agriculture, graduated in 2012.
Currently: independent educational consultant; PhD student at the HU Berlin for didactics in agricultural and horticultural sciences
From agricultural studies to education for sustainable development
As early as 2009, when I came to Witzenhausen for my Bachelor's degree in organic farming, I had a great interest in agriculture in combination with educational work. Is it social farming? Would I like to work on a school farm? Or would I be more interested in environmental education? I had to search a bit before I found what I have been passionate about for a good ten years now.
Marina Hethke and my work as a freelance specialist guide in the tropical greenhouse brought me into contact with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and then everything just fell into place. ESD combines global and local sustainability issues, such as agriculture, with the promotion of sustainability skills and therefore many things that are very important to me.
As part of my Bachelor's degree, I worked intensively on ESD in the elective subject "Fachführerschein", in the module "Environmental Communication" and also in the small and large project work. And thanks to a recommendation from Marina Hethke, I took part in a leadership training course on ESD run by the Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in 2012, from which many things developed for me.
Thinking outside the box
I was particularly fascinated by the global perspective of ESD from the very beginning. Before I came to Witzenhausen to study, I lived and worked in Peru for a year and a half in various gardens and agricultural projects. I was able to deepen my enthusiasm for and knowledge of crop diversity during my studies and during a semester abroad at the partner university Universidad Agraria La Molina in Lima, Peru. The global historical distribution of crops was one of the big aha-effects during my studies and is now part of my educational work. I take students "On a vegetable world tour" and we deal with questions whose answers I often know from bachelor modules in Witzenhausen: What did people eat in Germany around 1700? Where do different types of vegetables originally come from and what do their wild forms look like? The surprised looks on pupils' faces when I let them look into my corn treasure chest with 30 different types of corn - as part of the educational module "Strawberry corn... what's that?" - never cease to amaze me.
At the interface between education and agriculture
But science hasn't really let go of me either. Since 2016, I have been doing my doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin in the field of agricultural and horticultural didactics on the international, virtual networking of pupils and their school gardens (virtual school garden exchange). Here, too, I work at the interface between education and agriculture and usually say: I do educational research in the agricultural sciences.
The question: "What would have happened if I hadn't..." doesn't arise. Nevertheless, I am very sure that I learned many things in Witzenhausen for which I am infinitely grateful today and without which I would certainly be somewhere else today. In addition to all the knowledge, there are of course the many people who have become very dear to me - great friendships that will certainly last for a long time to come.