Crisis to resilience: Student empowerment in the climate emergency and beyond
This project addresses climate anxiety by exploring the creation of empowering learning spaces aimed at exploring sustainable futures. It enables students to engage with their climate-related emotions, overcome apathy, and cultivate resilience to actively contribute to climate action. The initiative delves into three innovative forms of learning spaces, which empower students to “re-act”, “re-imagine,” and “re-create,” thereby granting them agency in confronting the climate crisis as a complex issue that goes beyond individual experiences.
Background
Climate change disproportionately impacts young people, leading to high prevalence of eco-anxiety among students. A recent global study (Hickman 2021) supports this, revealing that 59% of youth are very/extremely worried about climate change. As educators, we face the challenge of addressing climate emergencies while attending to the needs of students experiencing climate anxiety. Wicked problems like climate threats (Sun 2016) can be overwhelming, leaving students feeling unprepared to tackle them. How can we motivate, empower, and prepare students to confront climate emergencies?
Evidence suggests that climate change concerns positively predict adolescents’ engagement in public and private pro-environmental behaviors, especially when coupled with high levels of environmental efficacy (i.e., the belief that climate change can be effectively mitigated with individual or collective effort; Becht 2023).
Project Description
This project addresses this challenge by promoting resilience, i.e. adapting well to adversity and stress, in higher education. Duso’s (2021) resilience model (ARM) identifies factors and protective mechanisms across individual, external, and academic systems. We employ the ARM to understand student needs, the consequences of resilience deficits, and strategies to foster resilience across these systems. While our project focusses on climate emergencies, our teaching modules aim to be applicable across diverse contexts, recognizing broader necessities and applicability of resilience in higher education.
The initiative delves into three innovative forms of learning spaces. These learning spaces/practices include:
- an exploration of the Polak Game as a tool to find common ground for collective action (‘re-act’);
- the ecocritical modification of iconic games and game franchises contributing to transdisciplinary climate imaginaries (re-imagine);
- the development of community gardening and food forest initiatives on the UU campus and beyond (‘re-create’).
The proposed learning goals and activities to bolster resilience, guided by Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan & Deci 2000), revolve around three core psychological needs: Autonomy/Agency, Competence, and Relatedness. In our project we aim to stimulate students’ basic psychological needs (Ryan & Deci, 2000) through diverse learning activities. For instance, students lead climate initiatives like community garden projects to enhance autonomy and reduce eco-anxiety and collaborate on redesigning games envisioning sustainable futures to foster community and purpose.
Aims
The project aims to bolster students’ individual and social resilience and agency towards climate action, as well as enhancing their general resilience. Teaching modules will be disseminated through UU-wide teacher inspiration projects, with the effects on students’ wellbeing and learning being scientifically monitored.
Intended results
The USO-project will develop and implement creative teaching approaches to empower students and teachers, matching their psychological needs, to help students navigate challenging subjects without becoming overwhelmed, and empowering them to work towards sustainable futures.
Deliverables
- D1.1. Project management plan (first draft in month 3, maintained as a living document via Teams)
- D1.2. Project website via UU WordPress instance to communicate project results.
Learning goals (as per the constructive alignment framework)
- Reflecting on one’s experienced sense of ‘agency’ concerning the climate crisis.
- Experiencing ‘connectedness’ with others through collective reflection on the climate crisis.
- Understanding one’s emotions related to the climate crisis and their imagination of the future.
Deliverables
- D2.1. Tool development for course package; adaptation and implementation of existing Polak game (year 1)
- D2.2. Report on transfer of teaching module to other UU-courses (year 2)
- D2.3. Training toolkit for teachers including lesson plan to implement the Polak game module covering introductory exercises, positioning activities, and guidance on facilitating discussion regarding student emotions (dissemination, year 3).
Learning goals
- Understanding how games contribute to sustainable future imaginaries through worldbuilding, rule systems, and player interaction.
- Modifying popular board/card game franchises to express personal viewpoints and critique/respond to messages built into the original games through design (‘competence’).
- Processing information about real-world climate threats and solutions, translate them into coherent game worlds and rules and use game modifications as tools to foster productive climate communication.
- Experiencing increased ‘agency’ by collectively prototyping alternative social imaginaries.
Deliverables
- D3.1. Tool development for course package; workflow along with (digital and physical) sample materials enabling ‘game franchise hacking’ for climate education contexts (year 1)
- D3.2. Report on transfer of teaching module to other UU courses (year 2)
- D3.3. Training toolkit including detailed lesson plan and video tutorials for teachers to implement and adapt the method, including sample modifications (see ‘plan of approach’) (dissemination, year 3)
- D3.4. Comparative analysis of worldbuilding and procedural rhetoric in student- created game modifications from WP3 (evaluation, year 2).
Learning goals
- Understanding the connection between contact with living things and mental health (biophilia).
- Understanding basic sustainable gardening principles, seasonality, native plants, and the role of rewilding and afforestation in mitigating the climate crisis.
- Understanding the role green spaces play in mitigating pluvial flood risk in Utrecht specifically – and how individuals can increase flood and drought resilience locally through nature stewardship (Brockhoff 2019).
- Experiencing connection, ‘agency’ and purpose vis-à-vis the climate crisis through engaging with diverse models of nature stewardship.
Deliverables
- D4.1. Tool development for course package; online inventory of existing (re)generative green spaces in/around UU, student-generated manifesto and practical gardening pilot to be integrated into the Environmental Humanities minor (year 1)
- D4.2. Digital map and directory of sites owned and administered by UU suitable for greening/rewilding (year 1)
- D4.3. Report on transfer of teaching module to other UU courses (year 2)
- D4.4. Training toolkit including a detailed lesson plan for teachers to implement the method and adapt its core principles (biophilia, rewilding, resilience) to other educational themes (dissemination, year 3).
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