The lecture will also be available on Zoom
In this talk I will explore how art and aesthetic approaches to environmental issues in secondary education may support students' agency and build environmental competencies, such as embodying sustainability values, embracing complexity, envisioning sustainable futures, and collective action. I will present three different projects that involved open schooling collaborations focusing on art-integrated approaches.
In the first project, secondary school students learned about the red-listed Atlantic salmon from the local river Akerselva and made a film about the salmon. In an analysis of the student-created film, we showed how students, through this narrative filmmaking, negotiated different perspectives on salmon, humans and nature.
The second project focused on the environmental challenges of the Oslo fjord and involved a collaboration between an artist, a biologist and teachers. The students created 3D-printed sculptures and combined them with materials and artifacts collected at the Oslo fjord. I present an analysis of the role of materials in students' meaning-making when creating an artwork the represented the human impact on nature.
Finally, in the "climate zone project", students created comics to explore different endangered species and their climate zone. In the presentation, I will present design principles on how to work with comics in environmental education, particularly on how they can be used to support students' futures-oriented thinking.
Associate Professor Cecilia Caiman from Stockholm University will provide comments on the lecture. Her research addresses education for sustainable development in science education, with a focus on the early years and the role of aesthetics.
We open for comments, questions and discussion afterwards.