Abstract:

Environmental issues have become more and more popular in the past few years. Safeguarding the environment represents a challenge no longer avoidable for present and future generations. In this regard, the school also plays a fundamental role as the main educational agency that has the task of training future citizens of the world.

This work presents an educational intervention in a fifth-grade classroom with the aim of making students aware of problems related to the consumption of energy, adopting a global-personal perspective. In particular, the intervention aimed at activating virtuous processes on the topic of electricity, with the purpose of making children responsible for their choices and aware that individual actions can have large effects on the Planet Earth.

In the proposal, we considered some theoretical-didactic assumptions of environmental education to sustainable development, i.e. the shared and participatory construction of a complex discourse on the topic of energy, in which the effects were related to the causes and to the possibilities for action and improvement, and an attention to the emotional dimension and to the individual's sphere of values. Also, dialogic-discursive methodologies were adopted in which students acts as the protagonists of their own learning process in the co-construction of knowledge. In this context, dialogue has become an action that offered children the opportunity to decide, choose, reflect on hypothetical and real actions, and negotiate their own and others' knowledge and meanings.

Among the various possible approaches, reference was made specifically to the Global Learning approach. This approach integrates all the above-mentioned aspects, underlining how the actions and decisions of the individual, together with those of others, have an effect both locally and globally, as he/she is part of an interconnected system. Consequently, a “global” education approach requires not only acquiring knowledge of the environment and of its problems, but also reflecting on the different aspects that characterise society and the economic and political issues of the world.

To verify the validity of the proposal, data were collected through multiple tools, considering the polymorphous nature of the considered aspects and the different dimensions touched by the proposal (cognitive, reflexive, metacognitive, self-regulating, etc.). Specifically, an observation checklist was used to register the behaviour and attitudes assumed by the children during the activities, while an objective test was used to assess knowledge and skills. Finally, a qualitative analysis was made on some aspects of the children’s personal logbook, a semi-structured instrument that accompanied the children’s personal reflection. The latter tool proved to be particularly significant for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposal, the development of self-regulatory processes and the acquisition of a positive behaviour about energy saving.

The results suggest that the proposal was effective. The children participated actively in the proposed activities and were able to discuss and reflect on relevant sustainability issues, transiting from a global perspective to a personal perspective. Most of the children developed reflexive processes on their own knowledge, on themselves and on their actions.

Keywords:

Sustainable energy, electricity, sustainable development, global learning, primary school.