Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Research in Teaching and Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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School Climate Assemblies: Impact at Individual, Community and Social Levels
Gisela Cebrián, Núria Monterde
ABSTRACT:
Youngsters’ participation in decision-making processes is essential to address current complex global challenges that manifest at local and regional levels, such as the climate crisis, biodiversity loss and desertification. This paper presents the EDUCLIMAD project, which focuses on implementing school climate assemblies to engage and empower young people in sustainability challenges. In this collaborative and deliberative democratic process students reflect critically, deliberate, make decisions and seek to find and propose solutions to promote local and regional sustainability. This project has been piloted in 25 schools in the province of Tarragona (Spain). The assemblies are structured in three stages of learning, deliberation and decision-making, with the support of a group of facilitators who guide participants throughout the process, ensuring that all opinions are actively heard. In this paper we present preliminary results in relation to the influence of school climate assemblies in the co-creation of sustainability solutions and explore the impact that the school climate assemblies and a final sustainability fair, involving all students and schools, had at an individual, community and social levels.
keywords: climate assemblies, schools, sustainability fair, impact