Educational resources and climate change

 Co-organised with Circle U Knowledge Hub on Climate, Xiaofeng Guo, Paris Cité University

Yacine Boufkhad, Paris Cité University. Sensors networks for energy monitoring in educational buildings

Marcel Robischon and Wendy Morel, Humboldt Universität Berlin, Agroecology. Project based teaching and learning

Marnik Vanclooster, UC Louvain. Water, agriculture and food security 

Yoko Mochizuki, Paris Cité University. Interrogating educational responses to climate crisis: Reimagining climate change education in the Anthropocene

PajolConnecté - Network of non-intrusive intelligent sensors for the energy performance/comfort of the Pajol building as a teaching aid project

 Xiaofeng Guo, Yacine Boufkhad, Paris Cité University

Xiaofeng Guo is a professor at the University Institute of Technology, Faculty of Sciences, Université Paris Cité. His research at LIED lab (CNRS) is to facilitate energy transition with a systematic approach at multiple scales. At the city scale, he worked on waste energy recovery for heating and cooling; At the building scale, he is interested in energy audit methods hybridizing bigdata with physics. He holds an Energy Engineer background and he is currently academic chair on Climate in Circle U., an European University Alliance.

Yacine Boufkhad is an assistant professor at the University Institute of Technology, Faculty of Sciences, Université Paris Cité. His research is with Paris Interdisciplinary Energy Research Institute (PIERI - LIED UMR 8236), which also belongs to CNRS. His research is on complexity theory and especially on probabilitic and algorithmic aspects of the Satisfiability Problem in computer science and focus now on AI models for energy and air quality in buildings. He teaches computer science and IOT systems applied to energy and air quality to the students of the Institute of Trechnology.

The idea behind this project is to use the Paris Pajol IUT (University institute of technology) building in a non-intrusive way to support a range of teaching activities (projects, learning and assessment situations, practical work, etc.) in a way that addresses environmental issues, energy saving and user comfort, while at the same time being integrated into the logic of the university curriculum and the technical and vocational apprenticeships defined by the national programme.

The IUT building has HQE (High Environmental Quality) certification, which combines respect for the environment, low energy consumption and comfort for users in terms of ventilation, brightness, temperature and noise. The aim of the teaching project is to have the students create an infrastructure based on a network of connected sensors that send measurement values in real time to a platform that can be accessed on request, in order to collect data for use in an audit and quality approach. Thanks to graphics based on virtual reality, the visualisation will enable a large number of people (students, teachers, researchers and even property department managers) to understand how the whole system works. In this way, the platform could benefit not only the IUT but also other courses.

The teaching work involves the gradual creation of this infrastructure by the students, who will choose the sensors, create the connected objects, monitor their metrology, maintain them and use the measurements. Part of this work will be carried out under the joint supervision of a Cégép in Quebec, where a number of students spend the S4 part of their course each year.

This project is intended to last beyond the project period, once the connected sensors have been instrumented and the virtual reality system has been developed.

Water, agriculture and food security  

Marnik Vanclooster is a full professor and Head of the Earth and Life Institute at UCLouvain. He specializes in agro-hydrology and integrated water resources management, developing several projects aimed at strengthening the capacity of actors in the agricultural and water sectors in the Global South to adapt and mitigate climate change in the water-food sector.

Climate change exerts significant pressure on the global food production system, posing immense challenges. Global food production needs to increase by 30% to 60% by 2050, while natural resources for food production are limited and strongly affected by climate change. Water, a major constrained natural resource, is significantly impacted by climate change. Seventy percent of global freshwater use is still attributed to the agricultural sector, with twenty percent of cultivated land being irrigated, yet accounting for 40% of total crop production. Agricultural water management, aimed at increasing water productivity, is therefore key for climate-smart and resilient agriculture. Capacities for implementing climate-resilient agricultural water management need strengthening, particularly in the Global South. This presentation will provide examples of how training for future actors in climate-smart agricultural water management has been shaped that are particularly are accessible for a large student community in the Global South. References will be made to the RESCIF (Réseau des Sciences de l’Ingénieur de la Francophonie) Open Education MOOC program, which provides high-quality teaching material for future agricultural engineers. Additionally, reference will be made to the ARES-supported advanced master's program in Water-Nexus. Finally, activities developed in this context within the climate hub training program of Circle U will also be referenced.

 Changing the perspective of Education

Marcel Robischon is a professor in the Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute for Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt University Berlin. He is head of the Division of Agricultural Ecology and director of the Affiliate Institute Berlin Institute of Cooperative Studies (BICS). He is academic director of the Climate Hub in the European University Alliance Circle U. His research in Agroecology among other topics includes aspects of education with a focus on place- and object-based approaches and narrative forms in education for sustainable development.

In the context of education for sustainabel development we use and encourage in our division of Agricultural Ecology, teaching methods that involve apart from textbooks and scientific papers, first-hand experience, that is place- and object based and allow for an authentic original encounter. Objects and places are chosen appropriately as illustrative examples to foster content knowledge and to trigger epistemic curiosity. To enhance relevance, living or inanimate objects and places are introduced using narrative forms, e.g. by linking them to major historic events. In some cases, the use of literary forms, e.g. fiction or poetry lends itself to bring the “storied object” to life. In our division we have used several works of fiction and poetry on extinct or critically endangered species as a tool to both, engage and inform and to build a bridge into more science-based more science-based forms of learning. Some recommendations for the use of literary forms in creating learning activities can be derived from our work in progress.

Wendy Morel has worked in the field of education for more than two decades, teaching secondary biology and high school anatomy. For the past 10 years, she has been developing and facilitating Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) programmes within formal education, participating in the development of international teacher training materials focused on ESD, as well as developing and implementing virtual exchanges between students from different countries. Wendy is currently CEO of The Handprint Initiative, and is doing her PhD project at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, as well as teaching workshops for teachers and students.

Education for Sustainable Development aims to counteract the “doom and gloom” and “helplessness” that many feel about the enormity of environmental and social problems. Nevertheless, we cannot keep teaching in the same way and expect different results. Expecting learners’ attitudes and actions towards the environment to change is unrealistic when the main message we deliver is “The world is about to end and it’s your fault”.

The Handprint concept, launched in 2007, which states that solving all environmental and social issues is possible by taking individual and collective engagement to positive action (Alvarenga et al., 2020). It could be defined as a solution-oriented approach, which promotes systemic thinking for sustainability and fosters individual and collective positive action, namely actions towards sustainable development.

This presentation will cover the different Handprint examples, as well as The Handprint Initiative, a project born out of the need for a new pedagogical approach to deal with the current global challenges.

Research problem

Since the watershed year of youth climate activism in 2018, the field of education has witnessed a rapid proliferation of literature on climate change across its diverse subfields. Climate change education (CCE) is no longer confined to the field of science education and environmental education. A new body of literature is often motivated by a critique of much existing CCE, perceived to be inadequate to contribute to meaningful climate action. This paper interrogates proposals for reforming CCE and dissect dominant discourses pertaining to youth agency, innocence, vulnerability and anxiety and their intersections with the narratives of the ‘Anthropocene'--the proposed geological epoch in which the humankind has become a dominant force shaping the Earth's systems, including its climate.

Research questions

What is invisibilised, obscured or neglected within dominant framings of climate change education? How do they undercut meaningful social responses to the climate crisis?

Methodology

We draw on (1) the typology of seven storylines of youth in climate change as “innocent, vulnerable, heroic, alarmist, inheriting, apathetic or narcissistic” by Jones et al. (2023); and (2) Durbeck's (2019) postcolonial and ecocritical assessment of five narratives of the Anthropocene: (i) thedisaster narrative, which holds all of humanity universally responsible for bringing about environmental crises; (ii) thecourt narrative, which blames the Global North and the neoliberal socioeconomic system for causing climate crisis; (iii) theGreat Transformation narrative, which calls for combining efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change; (iv) the (bio-)technological narrative, which advocates intensive technocratic interventions such as geoengineering; and (v) the reflexively oriented interdependency narrative of nature-culture, which presents the Anthropocene as an opportunity to rethink mankind from a posthumanist perspective.

By analysing where different proposals for reforming CCE fit in the youth storylines of youth and the Anthropocene narratives, we identify the inadequacies of mainstream CCE and also problematize the core assumptions held by critics of mainstream approaches.

Results

Our analysis found that critical CCE literature points broadly to four different types of the perceived inadequacy of mainstream CCE: (i) the narrow and depoliticized notion of education as individual competency building, (ii) the privileging of a behavioural science framework, (iii) mainstream (white) environmentalism, and (iv) modern schooling in service of a capitalist social order.

Firstly, the positioning of children and youth as “agents of change” tends to be highly limited and individualized; children and young people are often encouraged to change themselves, their own skillsets, attitudes and behaviours, rather than transforming dominant structural forces and cultural ideologies that hinder meaningful responses to climate change. Secondly, the predominance of a behavioural science framework in CCE focusing on fostering pro-environmental behaviour change has led to inadequate attention paid to participatory, interdisciplinary, creative, and justice-driven approaches. There are fundamental tensions between individuating psychological and behaviourist approaches to climate anxiety and critical approaches that interrogate ideologies and institutions driving climate change. The former approach bolsters a misguided pedagogical preoccupation with fostering ‘hope', ‘optimism', ‘resilience' and ‘anti-fragility' among children and youth.

Thirdly, white supremacist environmental saviourism underlie much mainstream CCE. Solutions-oriented CCE reduces climate change to a technical problem to be ‘solved' while sustaining the underlying system. Finally, the fourth inadequacy emerges from the nature of formal education itself. CCE is confronted with two irreconcilable demands: a new demand for integrating climate change in curriculum (and other aspects of formal education) on one hand, and an unchanging demand for equipping youth with ‘relevant' skills, allowing them to secure employment, and achieve ‘success' in terms of material consumption on the other. There is a dearth of CCE literature which engages with more uncomfortable realities about children and youths' sometimes profound implication in ecological breakdown, at least within consumer capitalist societies where their sense of belonging is largely mediated through material goods and experiences.

Discontent with mainstream CCE has led to proposals that emphasize the role of education in allowing children/young people to dissent and contest the dominant institutions and ideologies that serve to perpetuate the neoliberal-capitalist social order. But fostering political agency alone is not sufficient for developing meaningful social responses to the climate crisis. Along the lines of the interdependency narrative of the Anthropocene, we also need to explore ways to move beyond anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism, and methodological individualism that underpin public discourses on young people and climate change. 

 References

Jones, C.A., Davison, A., & Lucas, C.H. (2023). Innocent heroes or self-absorbed alarmists? A thematic review of the variety and effects of storylines about young people in climate change discourses. WIREs Climate Change. 2023;e853. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.853

Dürbeck, G. (2019). Narratives of the Anthropocene: From the perspective of postcolonial ecocriticism and environmental humanities. In Monika Albrecht (Ed.), Postcolonialism Cross-Examined: Multidirectional Perspectives on Imperial and Colonial Pasts and the Neocolonial Present, pp. 271-288. London: Routledge.

See also Audrey Bryan and Yoko Mochizuki  Crisis Transformationism and the De-Radicalisation of Development Education in a New Global Governance Landscape