School of Education

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Climate Action with Project and Activity Based Learning (CAPABLE)

Aims:

To improve teaching and learning activities to address the climate crisis in public schools of Godavari Municipality, Lalitpur, Nepal.

Climate change is burning global and local issue and young people will face its effects in the future. In developing countries such as Nepal the consequences are particularly significant, but the education system is not preparing students with the knowledge and skills to both understand and address climate change. Mostly, teachers in secondary school use traditional teaching methods such as chalk and talk rather than interactive methods as project-based learning (PBL).

The project ‘Climate Action with Project Based Learning’ aims to develop the skills and confidence of secondary level teachers and students’ meaningful actions to be taken to address the climate crisis. The project includes one sensitizing workshop for the 18 school leaders from under resourced public schools. This will be followed by teacher training for 20 teachers on project-based learning, divided into three linked training sessions will be delivered and to translate training into classroom onsite mentoring and support. This will enable them to enhance the learning of 150 secondary level students. Including some expert external guidance from AVI Volunteer Professor Gavin Melles, training and workshops will be carried out by the faculty members of the Master in Sustainable Development Program Unit of Kathmandu University School of Education (KUSOED).

Objectives and Outcomes

  • To increase awareness of school leaders about climate change and the climate crisis.
  • To help school leaders and teachers understand the principles and applications of PBL to Secondary level teaching.
  • To develop the skills and confidence of secondary Level teachers and students on PBL approaches to address the climate crisis. 
  • To improve students reflective thinking and meaningful engagement on climate change action.

Outcomes

  • Promote climate change education through developing abilities of teachers on project-based learning in public schools of Nepal,
  • Increase reflective thinking of students thereby connecting school and community relationship for addressing climate crisis. 

Activities

a. Workshop with School Leaders

Four public schools were connected for developing climate change activities in schools. School leaders comprises head teachers, SMC members, and PTA members and Environment and health teachers. The main purpose of the workshop is to engage school leaders to implement PBL to combat the climate crisis in the local level as a result they can also monitor and evaluate the progress. 

Indicators: 20 

School Leaders will participate in the workshop. (Four from each school and 2 from Local Education Unit).

Activity 2: Teacher’s Training

This activity comprises three training sessions with teachers a day in a week for three weeks.  

  • Training Module 1:  Training on curriculum mapping to identifying the key issues of climate change in different subjects such as Science, Health, population and environment and Social Studies and Life skills in secondary level.
  • Training Module 2: Designing PBL sessions to connect with the issues of climate crisis for teachers.
  • Training Module 3: Delivery the session of the and mentoring students in PBL for climate change issues.

Indicators: 20 Teachers will be trained in integrating climate change into teaching and learning in secondary level schools.

Activity 3: Onsite support to teachers and students

  1. Students will engage in designing project-based learning with the help of the teachers with mentoring and onsite support of the KUSOE experts. (4 Events in Four Schools once in a week).
  2. Students will create a photo documentary, collect stories from their community and compile them as a booklet, Documenting the ‘important’ stories from your family (immediate or extended), focusing on older generations first. Help your family tell their story by telling all their individual stories, then come up with a way to ‘publish’ that story (likely only sharing it with the family itself)

Engagement and Inclusion (200 Words)

The project addresses gender equality and social and cultural diversity directly as young girls and boys (secondary level students) are disproportionately represented in groups in the formal education. However, the project will aim to make inclusive participation of school leaders both male and female from school management committee, parents association, and teachers to bring their experiences with the climate crisis and making aware on future consequences. To identify gender and diversity impact, the following measures will be taken: 1. The project will include a gender balance and ensure representation of male and female youth as research participants. 2. During training and workshop work we (I along with other participants) will include reflections on the gender and caste, ethnicity diversity aspects emerging in relation to climate crisis and action. 3. The project will explore the gendered aspects of climate actions for their sustainable practices. 4. Stories and photos will be disaggregated by gender, age, and caste, and ethnicity.

Risks (200 Words)

COVID 19 pandemic and some other epidemic such as Dengue  (Medium)

The activities may reschedule, merge, implementation simultaneously or redesign following webinar/online-based - whatever is justifiable without compromising the quality.

The activities may reschedule, merge or implementation simultaneously - whatever is justifiable without compromising the quality.

School Ownership on project (Low)

Schools will be less likely to own the project as this is a short-term program. Hence it will be important to point out the mid- and long-term benefits to teaching of such an approach.

Participation and teachers (Low)

Teachers get a lot of training from government and non-government official, and the problem is related to transfer training to classroom, to bring the changes in the pedagogical approaches of the teachers. Hence the Project Leaders aim to follow up with visits to the relevant sites a year after the project has concluded

Members of school management Committee who cannot provide enough time to be involved (Low)

The School Management Committee members should be motivated by the Head teachers and teachers as well.

Difficulties to find capable teachers (Low) SMC and Head teachers needs to ensure the proper selection/ recruitment, training, and deployment of teachers in consultation with SMC.

Sustainability (200 Words)

Sustainability of the climate action training in schools the sustainability of the climate action training in schools is an important issue, as it is a long-term project. To ensure sustainability, we need to find a way for students to continue the work even after they leave school. We are currently developing projects with local partners that will allow students to continue their engagement with this topic once they leave school. The climate action training program has been running since 2013, with an average of 50 schools participating each year. These schools represent a wide range of cultural and social diversities, including some linguistic and economic. Participation of the school leaders and teachers in the workshops and training develops the institutional stability to continue climate action activities. The program also had a positive impact on school engagement with climate change by providing opportunities for teachers and students to learn about the topic and its impacts in a relevant and meaningful way. This will be achieved using hands-on activities, storytelling, photovoice (creative approaches) and role-playing games. These activities will be designed to engage all students regardless of their prior knowledge or experience with climate action.

Budget