Investigating school ground vegetation research: A systematic mapping review

Abstract

Vegetation on school grounds has several values and functions that contribute to aspects as children’s well-being, pedagogy and microclimate among others. Research on school ground vegetation is conducted within many different research fields and deals with a variety of research themes. A systematic review was conducted to explore scientific literature on the topic of school ground vegetation broadly, enabling an overview of this diverse field and the discovery of trends or gaps within this research. The objective was also to investigate to what extent actual vegetation is in focus in this literature. The results highlight a low level of specificity when describing vegetation, concerning both spatial aspects and content, with general terms such as “nature” or vegetation types (trees/shrubs/grass, etc.) being common, leading to difficulties in interpretation and synthesis. A multitude of themes are present, describing different research foci. Several themes show limited interaction with other themes, such as the theme “microclimate”, which may be of notable relevance for future research because of global warming. More coherence in how to describe vegetation on school grounds is needed to compare results. Also, more connections between research themes could address research gaps and be beneficial for future research endeavours.