Abstract:

Getting involved with sustainability issues at a pedagogical level is a sine qua non condition for young people to critically understand current reality, develop their action competence in bringing socio-environmental change and creatively envision a more sustainable future. However, established school practices are failing to respond to this challenge mainly due to the predominance of positivistic educational paradigms emphasising the transmission of scientific knowledge to the detriment of the development of critical and creative thinking and the fostering of action. This incompatibility is further reinforced by the fact that sustainability issues are by nature complex and dense with conflicting perspectives. Educators need therefore to experiment with new tools and approaches which will support learners to meaningfully get involved with these issues and identify strategies for creatively addressing them in everyday life.

Within this rationale we designed and implemented an educational program aiming at eliciting the students’ creative engagement with exploring the sustainability parameters of their everyday practices through the design and play of a digital game. The study was conducted with Greek high school students. Participants were first introduced with a ready-made game, called “PerfectVille”, which was deliberately built on a false “sustainability model”. While playing and evaluating their scores they were helped to challenge model inherent in the game and identify alternative sustainability ideas to implement in a new game (“MySusCity”). Our research results indicate that students get engaged in creative co-constructions of meanings both in how to fulfil the task (play, design and create their game) and to envision what living sustainably in a city may involve. We argue that learning to learn together processes through the use of appropriately designed digital tools can foster the creative engagement of learners with complex sustainability issues framed to be of personal relevance to them.

The study is part of the EU-funded project “Metafora - Learning to Learn together: A visual language for social orchestration of educational activities”.

Keywords:

Collaborative creativity, environmental education, constructionism, sustainable lifestyles, sustainable city, digital games, learning to learn together.