Creating a virtual space for collaborative project planning using the future creating workshop process: building the global climate change education initiative

ABSTRACT

This article describes our use of an online Future Creating Workshop (FCW) as a planning strategy to support our Global Climate Change Education Initiative (GCCEI). The GCCEI is an Educational Action Research project designed to provide the opportunity for students to discover how climate change acts to affect weather, health, economy, politics, and culture in their own communities and around the world by bringing young people aged eleven to fourteen into the conversation and into relationships with an international group of peers, In order to move this project forward despite the challenges created by the pandemic, we initiated an online FCW, grounded in Critical Utopian Action Research. We provide a detailed description of this research process highlighting both the challenges we face in trying to launch this project as well as our visions for the future. We consider the implications of this research process in relation to problem-based and multimodal forms of learning. This article describes the virtual FCW that we hope can serve as a model to others as well as a reflection on the implications of the outcomes of this research process for researchers and educators interested in fostering meaningful dialogue among students regarding the climate crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change education
• critical utopian action research
• educational action research
• future creating workshop
• sustainability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

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Notes

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation [OGMB191120].