Children as sustainable citizens
This project delivered a new educational package for children to explore and learn about sustainability in primary schools.
Led by the Welsh School of Architecture and School of Geography and Planning, this project developed, tested and evaluated bilingual educational package and resources for teachers in primary schools to be used by pupils to experiment with and explore the indoor environment and the sustainability of their classrooms using citizen science methods.
Our audience and collaborators were primary school teachers, pupils and educators, and organisations and education officers in local councils working on sustainable learning and STEM engagement.
The project promoted sustainability education among primary school pupils, supporting the UN Sustainable Development goals and Wales Future Generation Act’s sustainability agenda.
The project supported teachers and pupils to engage with science, sustainability and experiential learning though learning activities where they gathered evidence about the sustainability and indoor environment in their own schools. Through these, they learnt about the nature of research, data gathering, handling and interpretation, whilst better understanding the role of scientific and social-science research.
Children were supported to pair citizen science methods with building monitoring to create valuable forms of data collection for building management and energy performance, to enhance decision-making at the school and council level (i.e. heat and ventilation needs and performance). Building an ongoing platform for this data stream, and linking it to user behaviour, is critical for reducing energy use in buildings and increasing users’ knowledge.
The project aimed to foster pupils’ experimentation and hands-on learning on sustainable buildings and more broadly, STEM skills supporting Wales ambitions for capacity building and skill development of young people. Teachers skills were enhanced in enabling the delivery of sustainability and STEM education linked to real-world scenarios and data.
The funding enabled Cardiff University to strengthen partnerships with Cardiff schools, and expand our network to reach out to new councils and schools in the Cardiff Capital Region.
