Educational Insights
Bringing Elementary and High School Students as Central Part in the Discussion and Actions of the Environmental Crisis and Global Emergencies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carlos Frederico Duarte Rocha
The level of degradation and destruction of natural ecosystems has reached a planetary level and urgent actions and changes are needed jointly by different countries, preventing the destruction of nature from reaching a "Point-of-No-Return", putting human existence and other forms of life at risk. We believe that the main solution for these problems is education, including children and young people, not only as spectators, but as a central part of this discussion and actions about current processes promoting global sustainability and environmental crisis. These students, as future adults, will be important additional minds part acting to promote needed changes in order to keep health conditions of the planet and its environments for all living forms, including Man. Our project, funded by a state agency (FAPERJ), acts in six structural axes: Lectures by university researchers in the schools on global urgencies of Agenda 2030 and COP-27; immersion by school students in the urgent themes for the elaboration of a didactic manual to support the teaching for use by schools; holding workshops for students on learning and practices on the environment and technologies; experiencing and practices in nature and in the urban environment by students. These structural axes promote an articulation among the Direction, teachers and students of two schools (elementary and high school levels) of Santa Maria Madalena municipality, local Education and Environmental Secretaries, researchers from Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and the local State Park (Desengano); thus involving schools, university, government managers of education and of the environment.
The Financial and Educational Sustainability Challenges at School of Literature and Language Sciences (ELCL) in Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica: Post-pandemic Era View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Natin Guzman Arce, Mayra Loaiza Berrocal
This study considers the future challenges the School of Literature and Language Sciences (ELCL) needs to sort out to keep an equilibrium between financial and educational sustainability. Whether prepared or not, the pandemic molded aspects of humanity, and as such universities were forced to move from a traditional classroom education to a virtual high-tech-based one. The post-pandemic era set educational systems with challenges in curriculum planning and how these can be sustained financially through time. Since Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (UNA) gets governmental support, it is a fact that UNA and its different faculties must look for financial support and stability to operate with a much more comfortable scope. This paper discusses and evaluates the route the ELCL will take aligned with the Costa Rican governmental and UNA policies to keep providing the same quality teaching education in its majors: Spanish, English and French during these past five decades. Besides this, the new educational pathways require better business-like organizations whose goal is twofold: to serve the society and its citizens as well as to provide personnel labor stability and to keep the business going firmly.
Lessons Learned in Building and Sustaining Community-Academic Interdisciplinary Partnerships to Improve Maternal Health: Building and Sustaining Community-Academic Interdisciplinary Partnerships
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kristin Trainor, Glenn Stone, Jay Kandiah
In response to the United States’ maternal and infant health outcomes and growing health disparities, this interdisciplinary project investigates the development of a community advisory board (CAB), guided by the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), by exploring the impact of health literacy, bias and stigma, and strengths from the perspectives of healthcare providers and community stakeholders, including university students. Understanding the complexities of CBPR, between community and academic partners and sustaining a CAB, is a necessary process prior to developing one’s own CAB. This step-by-step process analysis allows for greater clarity and recognition of areas to consider in future CAB initiatives and use of interprofessional education. Both quantitative and qualitative principles were used to assess and evaluate the process including survey, observation, and content analysis. Promising results emerged supporting strong group dynamics and commitment toward change in the local community while identifying improvements to the overall delivery of the community advisory board and CBPR process. Identification of considerations when forming and sustaining community advisory boards (i.e., diversity, group development, location, flexibility, time restraints) and empowering the voices of community members as true experts, provides a basis for training the next generation of university students, healthcare providers, and researchers to work in interdisciplinary teams to listen, respect, explore and integrate the voices of society to understand the health and health needs of the community. Thus, building interprofessional partnerships and education between providers, educators, and consumers may help to boost effective services, increase understanding and education, and develop stronger committed partnerships.
Practicing to Live Sustainably: A Lifewide Approach View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michelann Parr
This paper weaves together concepts drawn from the eight limbs of yoga as conceived by Patanjali (Iyengar, 1991; Stone, 2009), sustainable education principles and practices (Orr, 1994; Sterling, 2001), the quest for an undivided life (Brown, 2012; 2017; Hanh, 2008; Palmer, 2004) and Indigenous pedagogy/teachings and worldview and the concepts of living a good life - Mino-pimatasiwin (Absolon, 2011; Hart, 2012). It argues that sustainability values and practices develop along a continuum that can be fostered in socio-cultural spaces that recognize the need to start where we are. Personal stories as well as practical strategies, resources, and literature will be offered as practices that can be used across the lifespan to foster intergenerational conversations grounded in respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and relevance (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 2001) and in an effort to develop personal perspective, ethics, and efficacy for social action (Newton, 2003; Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002). A case is made for education as sustainability from cradle to grave wherein the ultimate purpose of education - formal and informal, intentional and incidental, theory and practice, home and school - is ultimately to develop a sustainable self, family, community, and world that reaches lifewide and lifelong across diverse cultural, social, and land-based contexts (Clark, 2005, McKnight & Block, 2012).
