The golden egg: curricular potential of a backyard chicken coop

Abstract

This project examines the multi-dimensional applications of building a chicken coop. Interest in raising chickens and urban backyard coops have increased recently for a variety of identified reasons including: the desire to be closer to our food source, to reduce ecological footprint, backyard to table access of high-quality nutritious eggs, developing empathy through animal husbandry, and benefits of nature encounters and pet ownership. Connecting this project to a classroom or school has immense potential to address many learning outcomes from almost any subject area or grade level. It also creates opportunities for building relationships between classes or extensions within environmental education. This is a hands-on project that appeals to a wide variety of learners, including girls, minority, and the typically non-academic or motivated students. This project provides a detailed look at the current academic research in Science, Technology, Society, and Environmental (STSE), nature connection, and authentic learning. Viewed through the theoretical lens of the everyday expertise and ecology theory, the importance of a learner’s environment are identified as being integral to the learning process.