Young People solving Environmental Problems
This project, initiated in 2005, focuses on young Canadians’, Romanians’, Tunisians’, Brazilians’, Guineans’, and Colombians’ capacities to pose and resolve environmental problems in an effective and creative way. In this action research project, students from New Brunswick, Québec, Romania, Tunisia, Brazil, Guinea and Columbia are first invited to analyze their local environment and then to solve an environmental problem with the help of scientists (chemists, biologists, hydrologists). In the Cocagne river (N.B) and the St. Laurence river (Québec), high school students look at the impacts of prescription and over the counter medication and personal hygiene products (shampoos, perfumes) on water and mussels found in the watershed. Other Canadian high school students look at some impacts of climate change (precipitation rates) and try to find adaptations. Canadian elementary school students study the impacts of sedimentation on a watershed aquatic species.
In Bucarest (Romania) and Gafsa (Tunisia), elementary and high school students try to reduce the amount of garbage citizens leave on the streets. In Urubici (Brazil), elementary school students work on the problem of tourists throwing away garbage that could affect water quality in the Guarani Aquifer. In Guinea, high school and technical formation students investigate the water pollution problem that exists everywhere in the city. Finally, 13-18 year old students from Columbia look at waste management.
While students get involved in problem solving, researchers describe how these students pose an environmental problem. The problem statement (representation), second step in the problem solving process, must be done effectively to ensure the production of many creative and adequate solutions. Researchers observe various elements (cognitive and affective) in the way students pose an environmental problem : their conception of the problem, the links that they make between the elements of the problem, the types of heuristics and diagrams spontaneously used, their comprehension of mathematical data, the organisation of the information, their affective relationship with the problem, the conception of the quality of life (desired situation once the problem is solved), the number and effectiveness of the foreseen solutions.
In the second part of the research, researchers attempt to improve students' competence to pose an environmental problem, in order to increase their abilities to solve it. Various creativity and pedagogical strategies are experimented with the students: exchanges with peers to formulate the problem, systems approach, analogy, stating the problem several times. Researchers verify if these creativity and pedagogical strategies allow students to better pose the problem and to find more original and more adequate solutions to the problem.
Other projects
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Understanding the Impact of Technology and Online Learning Studies
What Happens When We Extend Learning Beyond the School Curriculum Studies
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