Conference Theme Alignment: Addressing social justice by leveraging technology and innovative approaches

Abstract:

Research Aim: This study aims to propose an innovative citizenship education practice by investigating the existing educational programs within three Indigenous organisations dedicated to cultivating participants’ citizenship. The research aims to explore how Indigenous communities define and implement citizenship education, focusing on recognising the contradictions within this education, reflecting sustainable values, and amplifying Indigenous epistemologies. These elements are seen as crucial for promoting social justice and providing educators with opportunities to evaluate and reflect on the intrinsic curriculum and their teaching practices.

Theoretical Framework: Utilising the world anthropologies framework (Restrepo & Escobar 2005), this research takes a collaborative and dialogical approach by examining how Indigenous knowledge holders and non-Indigenous collaborators transmit knowledge, social responsibilities, environmental sustainability, and justice-oriented values. This framework supports recognising atypical citizenship education learning approaches and critiquing dominant narratives.

Methods: The study employs a qualitative approach, including participant observation and in-depth interviews, to gather data from three organisations. The data collection process highlights the uniqueness and strengths of Indigenous approaches to citizenship education. It underscores the role of non-traditional educational practices—such as storytelling, rituals, and community engagement—in reinforcing citizenship cultivation.

Findings: The study's significant finding proposes innovative citizenship education approaches based on Indigenous epistemology. Such approaches are vital for addressing tensions in citizenship education and reimagining a more inclusive social contract that honours and integrates Indigenous knowledge systems, contributing to ongoing cohesions in this field.

Relevance: This research proposes innovative citizenship education approaches by amplifying Indigenous voices and recognising the importance and values of Indigenous educational practices.

This research aims to explore how environmental citizen science can contribute to lived eco-citizenship in young people while they are in formal schooling. Young people are taking increasingly public and overtly political action in response to environmental concerns. There is a need for schools to support young people in navigating current environmental challenges, however, the capacity for schools to do this can be inconsistent. Research is needed to better support schools and young people in confidently responding to contemporary and evolving environmental issues.

Hayward (2012) suggests that young people have different experiences of environmental or eco-citizenship than adults. Emphasising the everyday experiences of young people, at home, in school or with their friends, rather than ‘adult’ experiences like voting or environmentally-conscious consumerism, offers a way of realistically understanding eco-citizenship in young people. Kallio, Wood and Hakli (2020) describe lived citizenship in a way that explores the reality of citizenship in everyday situations rather than relying on the formal, legal status of citizenship. This analysis draws upon that conception, placing the embodied experiences and acts of eco-citizenship in the daily life of young people at its core.

Using a qualitative, in-depth, multi-method, case study approach, exploring the experiences of school-based participants (n=74, pupils, teachers and scientists) across three different school-based citizen science projects, and a small number of pupils who had no citizen science experience in schools as comparison.

A major finding is that environmental citizen science experiences offer opportunities to connect pupils with scientific research practices in a way that connects them with authentic eco-citizenship not ordinarily available in schools. Supporting teachers and citizen science providers to work together in building such opportunities into formal education provision can strengthen school responses to local and global environmental challenges.

This study investigates the ‘purposes of education’ and 'equitable teaching' through the philosophical underpinnings that inform different schooling types. A critical content analysis (CCA) of school documentation reveal the espoused purpose of education and the type of citizen each school type aimed to graduate. The CCA deductively aligned the findings to the four traditions of education (epistemological, curricular, organisation, pedagogical) and domains of learning (cognitive, affective and psychomotor). The findings locate power in the social practices of schooling and uncovered understandings and transforming conditions of inequity of learning evidenced within the varying contexts. The study revealed the ‘future citizen’ being shaped by each school type in terms of learning domains and the espoused policy into measurable outcomes. Although the range of schools are increasing, for many students, schooling remains a choiceless choice and inherently inequitable.