Connecting schools and society toolkit
This toolkit aims to connect schools and society, enlarging science learning projects to incorporate school and local communities. Activities can be performed in schools or informal learning settings.
Toolkits
Biodiversity and Agriculture toolkit
Protecting biodiversity while ensuring food security for people is one of the major challenges of our time. Human intervention in nature affects biological diversity, with traditional agriculture playing a central role. Land use change, pesticides and disease control measures lead to a drastic decline in various plant and animal populations.
How can we strike a balance between environmental protection and food security? To bring younger elementary school students into contact with these topics, this toolkit introduces key concepts in biodiversity and agriculture through outdoor learning activities.
Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services toolkit
Created in collaboration with researchers from various fields, including early childhood education and forest pedagogy, this toolkit enables students to learn about the diversity of ecosystems, the ecosystem services they provide, and appreciate their value for the wellbeing of societies.
Clean Water & Sanitation toolkit
Water management is crucial to sustainable development because clean freshwater and sanitation services are essential to human health and well-being.
Water doesn’t flow out of the tap by magic and sewage must be collected and treated: this implies long and complex processes, involving pipes and plants, state-of-the-art technologies, continuous quality control, machines, materials and energy. While substantial progress has been made to achieve the integrated management of water resources, billions of people still lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In this toolkit, schools and communities are be engaged to increase their scientific understanding of water management and sustainability. Students also undertake concrete actions to encourage sustainable behaviours to save and protect water resources and safeguard the environment.
Vaccination toolkit
Why do people remain unvaccinated? Globally, vaccination programmes have repeatedly led to heated debates.
In this toolkit, teachers and students discover different perspectives, including the two often-conflicting aims of protecting public health and individual autonomy at the same time. Activities include a game simulating the spread of a virus, and an ethical discussion on benefits and effects of vaccinations.
Forest use vs. Forest protection toolkit
Forests are one of our most important natural resources, and part of the solution to the global and local socio-environmental challenges we face. People and stakeholders have different interests in forests, underpinned by environmental, economic, cultural and social values. Often, these interests and values conflict with one another. How to manage forests is a complex and highly topical issue.
This toolkit uses real-life examples on the subject of forests to increase students’ commitment and willingness/ability to discuss complex topics and trade-offs, to make decisions based on economic, ecological, cultural, and social perspectives, to find compromises, and to develop different pathways for action.
Antimicrobial resistance toolkit
Overwhelming evidence shows that increased use, over-prescription and overconsumption are leading to an increase in antibiotic-resistant bugs. However, many people overuse and misuse anti-microbial chemicals because they lack knowledge about infections and anti-microbial agents – a critical issue around the globe that is affecting our health and putting our lives at risk. Thus, a vital step towards tackling this issue is to address it in education classrooms and through informed action.
This toolkit helps teachers to engage students and their families to develop a deeper understanding of the topic through first-hand experiences with relevant stakeholders, ultimately enabling them to make better-informed decisions about the use of antibiotics.
Air pollution toolkit
Air pollution is considered one of the leading environmental risks. Specially, traffic is one of the most significant sources of air pollution in urban areas. Recently, research on this topic has pointed out important health effects not only in the human respiratory system but also in human cognition and cardiovascular illnesses for those who are exposed to pollution. Thus, we need citizens’ active involvement to change this situation. This toolkit helps students to deeply consider how to improve the air quality in cities by collecting and analysing data and discussing it with scientists, experts in global health, and other relevant groups (NGO, policymakers, etc).
