“The jungle is disappearing because men are coming to cut down the trees" Co-creating sustainability integration at home and in education environments with children as key stakeholders and HE students as co-researchers

Project status: This is an ongoing collaborative project titled, Transformative Sustainability Education as an Everyday and Embodied Relational Practice between Innovate Teaching Research & Advocacy Consulting (ITRAC, UK; Project Principal Investigator, Dr Janbee Shaik Mopidevi) and Windesheim Honours College|Global Project and Change Management (WHC|GPCM, The Netherlands; Project Lead, Agnes Zenaida Camacho). 

Project focus: The first phase of the project focused on Dutch parents’ and early childhood practitioners’ perspectives on their collaborative role in inculcating sustainable values and behaviours in children at home and in educational settings. The next phase, implemented in The Netherlands and Germany, focused on children’s perspectives on sustainability (and integrating with parents and educators).

Project methodology: Finding holistic solutions to real world problems relating to UN SDGs (specifically SDG 4) with a focus on educators, families and how their synergy helps in instilling sustainable values, skills and behaviors in children at home and in school environments. 

Interested students from the Project Management for Change module of WHC|GPCM work as research partners and participate in all the decisions from research design to implementation to dissemination. Using co creation methodology and systems thinking students come up with sustainable solutions to real world problems with a focus on Whole School/Whole Institutional Approaches. 

Project activities so far: 

Phase One (2022-2023): Exploring the collaborative potential of educators and families in inculcating sustainable attitudes, behaviors and values in children at home and in settings (The Netherlands)

Outputs:

Advisory report on how schools and families can collaborate to better inculcate sustainable values and behaviors in their children. 

Research insights presented at the Relation Centered Education Network Conference in June 2023.

Phase Two (2023-2024): Children’s perspectives on sustainability and on how it is practiced at home and in settings environments (The Netherlands and Germany) 

Outputs: 

Research report highlighting children’s perspectives on sustainability, including a framework to improve synergy of caregivers and educators on integrating sustainability in primary education, and a guide to effectively use visual methods to elicit children’s perspectives.

Research insights from this project presented at the World Education for Early Childhood Education (OMEP) UK webinar in December 2023. 

Phase Three (2024-) Focuses on evaluation, dissemination and further expansion to diverse countries and contexts.   As such actively seeking interested case study/countries and funding support to further develop with an objective to elicit cross cultural perspectives and to critique hegemonic universal notions.

Please contact: 

Dr Janbee Shaik Mopidevi (ITRAC) email: janbeeshaikmopidevi@gmail.com

Agnes Zenaida Camacho (WHC|GPCM) Email: a.camacho@windesheim.nl