Newsletter #1

Welcome to the first newsletter from the SEAS project. In the newsletter, we summarize information and developments that we consider to be of interest to audiences and stakeholders related to open schooling, science education for citizenship and sustainability.

Open schooling in the time of Covid-19 pandemic

The corona crisis has had a profound impact for societies all over the world, as governments try to slow the progress of the virus through unprecedented measures that severely limit people’s mobility and opportunities for connecting in physical spaces. These developments have profound implications for education, and fundamentally alter the context of “open schooling” among the SEAS local networks. In Norway, for instance, children are taught at home through lesson plans and interactive online teaching. In some narrow formulations, such examples of “distance teaching” could be seen as an implementation of open schooling on a global scale. But that education is happening through distance is not the only vital side to open schooling.

In SEAS conceptualization of open schooling, it’s most defining characteristic is that open schooling allows schools cooperation with other stakeholders, as they become agents of social change and community well-being. In such a view, students engage in real-life inquiries and practical action in collaboration with other stakeholders. Citizens all over Europe are now finding out how to deal with large-scale changes imposed on their local communities. Changes that have direct implications for their personal and everyday lives. At some stage society at large, communities and individuals, as part of the recovery, will rebuild the fabrics of society and local communities. Then the experiences themselves can become a resource for transformative changes that are not imposed by the threat of a pandemic, but that is seen necessary for a better and sustainable world. The ambition of the SEAS project is to contribute to recovery by identifying and developing new practices and gaining new knowledge.
 


Local networks established in SEAS

The local networks in SEAS are conducting projects involving students or are in the planning phase of such projects, even though the Covid-19 pandemic impacts these projects with delays and changed course of action. The SEAS project aims to explore a set of shared objectives related to open schooling, science education for citizenship and sustainability while allowing for local variety in themes and methods. In this first round of local networks, examples of topics such as tourism and environmental ethics in connection to research on climate change, or sustainable cities and communities are explored. In some networks, students are encouraged to imagine the future and take action concerning cross-cutting scientific topics and take part in a 30-day challenge to change a habit. Others focus on the protection and utility of a protected area around the school.


The SEAS blog


The SEAS blog focuses on current research and activities in the intersection between scientific literacy, open schooling and sustainability challenges when students collaborate with families and stakeholders from civil society and industry in becoming agents of community well-being. 
 


The first PhD fellows have joined SEAS


Eva Roelandt and Hanna Røkenes are the first PhD Fellows to join SEAS. Eva Roelandt started as a doctoral student at the Centre for Sustainable Development at Ghent University in February. Roelandt and her colleagues want to disseminate the use of the LORET: locally relevant teaching tool. In their work, they will focus on recognizing the sciences as human undertakings which also involves values and political interests and as such contribute to the development of concepts, tools and good practices that includes capacities like critical thinking, reflexivity, empathy and agency.

Hanna Røkenes started as a doctoral student at The Department of Teacher Education and School Research at The University of Oslo in March. In her PhD-project, she plans to interview varied groups of people and examine their experiences with climate change. She will exploit psychology lens and use the knowledge from having worked in collaborative and interdisciplinary contexts to study ways and forms in which agency emerges and develops when teachers, students, and other stakeholders face climate change issues.
 


Deliverables

 

The SEAS project will during its course produce a range of deliverables which are key to the outcomes of the project. In the first phase of the project, the deliverables have focused on grounding the project conceptually and methodologically and setting up the local networks, cf. table below. Most of the deliverables are public documents. Any documents of interest can be obtained by sending an email to toril.eggen@ils.uio.no.
 

Deliverables

 
2.1  A plan and milestones concerning challenge implementation for each local network 
2.2  A document with the shared pool of SEAS’ analytical concepts and methods 
2.4  A guideline document for implementing and following up Change-Lab Workshops 
4.1  1. Updated guideline manual describing use of each of the SEAS digital tools 
7.1  Data Management plan (DMP)  
7.2  Report on a Communication and Dissemination Plan
Published Apr. 3, 2020 4:00 PM - Last modified Dec. 3, 2020 1:15 PM