The school garden as a didactic mediation for the development of stochastic thinking in primary education
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This review article examines the integration between the development of stochastic thinking in primary education and the didactic potential of the school garden as a situated learning environment. The objective was to analyze the theoretical and empirical foundations that support this articulation, identifying convergences, gaps, and opportunities within recent literature. Methodologically, a systematic review guided by PRISMA-type criteria was conducted, consulting international academic databases and prioritizing studies published between 2021 and 2025, while also incorporating key foundational references. Selected studies focused on the didactics of probability and statistics in school settings, evidence-based teaching strategies, and school garden interventions in non-university contexts. The findings reveal, on the one hand, an international consensus on the need for explicit conceptual progressions and contextualized tasks to strengthen students’ understanding of uncertainty and variability (Alsina, 2022; Batanero et al., 2019). On the other hand, research shows that garden-based learning enhances student engagement, motivation, and curricular integration (Williams & Dixon, 2019; Ohly et al., 2020), although its explicit connection to formal probabilistic reasoning remains limited. The review also highlights that structured teacher mediation and continuous feedback are decisive factors in achieving meaningful learning outcomes (Hattie, 2023). The article concludes that the school garden can function as an authentic laboratory for probabilistic reasoning when intentionally integrated into the curriculum through carefully designed instructional sequences. This articulation broadens the understanding of mathematics learning as a contextualized experience and offers a relevant research pathway for strengthening statistical literacy in primary education
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