Geosciences didactic experiences as a key component in Education for Sustainable Development

This research project aims to contribute to the dissemination of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development topics among pupils and all school communities. Since Geosciences intersect most of the Agenda 2030 Goals, Sustainable Development has become one of the core subjects of this discipline, as well as teaching Geoscience represents a key aspect of Education for Sustainability. Several Geoscience topics, such as natural resources exploitation, responsible consumption, ecological and water footprint, circular economy and waste reduction are the main subjects addressed in this work. The choice of these research topics arises from both the many connections between Sustainability and everyday lifestyles and from their several linkages with different matters. This interdisciplinarity is in line with the Italian School Citizenship education guidelines about Sustainable Development and UNESCO key-competencies for Sustainability. In fact, Education for Sustainability is one of the three main components of Citizenship Education that has become mandatory for all Italian schools in the last two years. Moreover, the Italian School Department established that Citizenship Education has to be addressed using multidisciplinary approaches, involving all school’s teachers. For this reason and in order to support educators in developing interdisciplinary didactic pathways on Sustainability, I implemented some didactic activities with comprehensive ready-to-use tools that make them easily replicable. Moreover, starting from Geoscience educational experiences, like laboratorial activities about the water and ecological footprint topics, teachers could approach socio-economic issues both globally and locally with a contextualization in their own territory. The study has been proposed with the dual purpose of spreading Earth Sciences topics among k6-k8 students and of using them as interdisciplinary vectors in order to promote eco-friendly behaviours. Understanding how to improve pupils' ability to establish and justify the relationships between humans and the environment is essential to make the younger generation become conscious and responsible towards the environment itself. The topics developed in this research project are, in detail: 1- The ecological footprint and ecological rucksack of everyday life simple actions (like washing, eating, dressing...), with a special focus on natural resources exploitation (water, soil), waste production and the responsible actions of reducing, reusing, repairing and recycling. Team work and hands-on activities were carried out in order to improve students’ awareness about these Sustainability subjects, linking them to pupils’ real life. 2- Responsible food consumption and the ecological footprint of foods. Pupils were engaged in a team-challenge game, to discuss and think critically about the environmental impact of their daily diet, due to food production, transport, distribution and packaging. Topics like water, carbon and ecological footprint were developed, as well as agriculture and farming stress on our planet's health. 3- Agenda 2030 Goals (SDGs) and its call for immediate action towards responsible lifestyles. The several interconnections between Geosciences and the SDGs are deeply discussed with pupils and teachers, in order to highlight the key-role of this discipline in Education for Sustainability. Agenda 2030 is the core issue of all the activities realized for this research. Moreover, an educational game was developed, completely dedicated to this UN plan of action. It is a cardboard Game, called Sustainable City Game (S-City Game), planned in an interdisciplinary manner, that proposes topics related to Agenda 2030 and Sustainability (like SDGs and targets, circular economy, natural resources exploitation ...). Several school matters, such as Science, Math, Geography, Technology, History and Citizenship were involved in this game. As a follow-up work, a digital version of the S-City Game was developed, in order to involve teachers and pupils from home, during COVID-19 lockdown. Learning-by-doing, cooperative learning and learning-by-gaming are the methodological approaches used for the activities tested. In order to involve pupils in an active way and to make them think about simple responsible behaviours, manipulation, team-work and gaming have proven to be very useful educational tools to vehicle Sustainability topics. The experimentation was carried out with k6-k8 students from different Italian schools. The first segment of the project was tested through activities in presence, while the second one was experimented through distance learning, because of the COVID- 19 crisis. In fact, the activities in presence are based on practical and hands-on experiences, besides an educational cardboard game, called S-city game. As a follow- up work, the digital version of S-city game, included in a virtual environment, was implemented, in order to face the pandemic emergency that could stop the research experimentation. On the contrary, the use of virtual environments and digital gaming allowed us not only to reach students and teachers from different Italian regions, but also to obtain good results in terms of learning and satisfaction. Nevertheless the distance mode, the laboratorial didactic approach based on constructivism, continued to characterize this research. Thanks to the data collected during this PhD project experimentation, we can positively evaluate the didactic activities tested that constitute effective educational pathways for improving pupils' awareness towards eco-friendly and responsible lifestyles.