Exploring the Impacts of Student-Led Sustainability Projects with Secondary School Students and Teachers

Paul Vare

doi:10.3390/su13052790

Abstract

Secondary school students are granted few opportunities to change their world, yet they are expected to engage fully as citizens the moment they leave school. This issue is growing starker with multiple global crises contributing to mental health concerns. This situation stimulated a practical education for sustainability project designed to promote student agency by supporting small, student-led, community-based projects, planned and supported within the secondary school context. This research ran alongside the project in order to investigate (a) the impact of implementing these projects on the students involved and (b) the implications of this for their teachers. The research approach was based on Cultural-historical Activity Theory, which explores the learning generated through multi-layered interactions within a given activity system. In stimulating student agency, it was clear that the project had challenged existing practice. Students sensed a shift in power relations, remarking on how teachers respected and listened to their opinions. Those teachers who appeared more authoritarian appeared to experience the greatest transformation although ceding power did not come naturally, particularly where this challenged notions around teacher responsibility. In this way, teachers’ professionalism threatened to become the means by which they withheld power from their students. Implications of this for schools and policy are considered.

Highlights

In the early Twenty-first Century challenges such as rising inequality, climate change and global biodiversity loss present young people with the spectre of monumental yet unknowable change. Such a situation can exacerbate feelings of powerlessness as well as anxiety [1,2]; it is unsurprising that many young people are experiencing a crisis in relation to their mental health [3]
This paper presents research that ran alongside a European Union-funded activity that set out to enhance student agency in five secondary schools in different locations across Europe
Before presenting outcomes of the data analysis, it should be noted that from the perspective of participating students and teachers, the project resulted in a wealth of community projects including the eco-friendly design of a new school sports hall, a successful campaign for a new cycle path, the design and development of a re-useable electronic conference badge and fund-raising activities for a food bank and blood bank

Summary

Introduction

In the early Twenty-first Century challenges such as rising inequality, climate change and global biodiversity loss present young people with the spectre of monumental yet unknowable change. Such a situation can exacerbate feelings of powerlessness as well as anxiety [1,2]; it is unsurprising that many young people are experiencing a crisis in relation to their mental health [3]. Viewed as “human becomings” rather than human beings [4] They are suddenly presumed to be ready to engage fully as citizens the moment they leave school. The research was based on Cultural-historical Activity Theory [6,7], viewing the Project as an activity system and exploring relationships and contradictions among the components of the system

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion