Wild citizens: enabling children to become active environmental citizens
Wild citizens: enabling children to become active environmental citizens
In recent times, calls to tackle the climate and nature crisis and live more sustainably are becoming more and more prominent and urgent. Such calls require environmental citizens; that is, citizens who are able to take action at local, national and transnational levels and to assume environmental agency through pro-environmental behaviours, attitudes and values. Placing emphasis on action within learning environments is essential given the current global environmental challenges, and therefore action competences (Sass et al., 2020) need to be addressed and fostered early in young people’s education. To enable children to become active environmental citizens we collaborated with five primary schools in the south-east of England in co-designing and co-delivering a school-based, outdoor ‘Wild Citizens’ programme focusing on biodiversity enhancement. The children explored their school grounds, discussed, decided, and implemented interventions to enhance its biodiversity, and finally, communicated their findings within their local community and advocated for the importance of their actions. Semi-structured group interviews were used to explore children’s’ environmental citizenship and action competences. The main themes emerging from our data included (a) environmental awareness and knowledge, (b) environmental responsibility and (c) confidence in own influencing possibilities, with children being able to articulate the importance of environmental protection, and discuss their role within that process. This work provides empirical grounding towards the operationalisation of environmental citizenship at the primary school level.
environmental citizenship, Socioscientific inquiry-based learning, biodiversity loss, Primary science education
Christodoulou, Andri
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Grace, Marcus
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Byrne, Dr Jenny
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Hughes, Carys
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Voutsina, Chronoula
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29 August 2023
Christodoulou, Andri
0a97820c-7e87-45d6-827a-d72fa1734d0a
Grace, Marcus
bb019e62-4134-4f74-9e2c-d235a6f89b97
Byrne, Dr Jenny
135bc0f8-7c8a-42d9-bdae-5934b832c4bf
Hughes, Carys
3ff2fa5a-7d2a-4214-9fa8-59210cae2a98
Voutsina, Chronoula
bd9934e7-f8e0-4b82-a664-a1fe48850082
Christodoulou, Andri, Grace, Marcus, Byrne, Dr Jenny, Hughes, Carys and Voutsina, Chronoula
(2023)
Wild citizens: enabling children to become active environmental citizens.
ESERA, , Cappadocia, Turkey.
28 Aug - 01 Sep 2023.
3 pp
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
In recent times, calls to tackle the climate and nature crisis and live more sustainably are becoming more and more prominent and urgent. Such calls require environmental citizens; that is, citizens who are able to take action at local, national and transnational levels and to assume environmental agency through pro-environmental behaviours, attitudes and values. Placing emphasis on action within learning environments is essential given the current global environmental challenges, and therefore action competences (Sass et al., 2020) need to be addressed and fostered early in young people’s education. To enable children to become active environmental citizens we collaborated with five primary schools in the south-east of England in co-designing and co-delivering a school-based, outdoor ‘Wild Citizens’ programme focusing on biodiversity enhancement. The children explored their school grounds, discussed, decided, and implemented interventions to enhance its biodiversity, and finally, communicated their findings within their local community and advocated for the importance of their actions. Semi-structured group interviews were used to explore children’s’ environmental citizenship and action competences. The main themes emerging from our data included (a) environmental awareness and knowledge, (b) environmental responsibility and (c) confidence in own influencing possibilities, with children being able to articulate the importance of environmental protection, and discuss their role within that process. This work provides empirical grounding towards the operationalisation of environmental citizenship at the primary school level.
Text
Christodoulou_et_al_2023_ESERA2023
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Published date: 29 August 2023
Venue - Dates:
ESERA, , Cappadocia, Turkey, 2023-08-28 - 2023-09-01
Keywords:
environmental citizenship, Socioscientific inquiry-based learning, biodiversity loss, Primary science education
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 498709
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/498709
PURE UUID: 3a01f46f-3ba1-419d-a113-6cbb68b6d1fd
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Date deposited: 25 Feb 2025 18:04
Last modified: 01 Mar 2025 02:48
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