Leveraging human-centered design at local and global levels to advance quality education for all through climate action

• In Event: Climate resilience in education: strategies for more resilient systems

Proposal

While there is increasing knowledge on the interrelationship between education and climate change, there are limited programs, data and research to translate this knowledge into practice at global and local levels. Informed by four educational research traditions, the Aga Khan Foundation’s (AKF) Human-Centered Design (HCD) approach offers a new contribution to knowledge by enabling the production of new data and evidence about how school- and community-led innovations in climate and education can be designed, implemented, measured, and scaled from the grassroots level. AKF believes that by solving for the most marginalized learners in society, we can generate new evidence about how best to inform mainstream climate action in and through education. To do so, AKF is working through local and global routes for change:
At the local level, In 2020, AKF launched the Schools2030 program as a new, ten-year, locally-rooted and globally informed initiative across one thousand schools over ten years in ten countries that equips educators with new skills in HCD to better design, implement, measure and showcase ‘what works’ to improve holistic learning outcomes for marginalized learners. Since its launch, Schools2030 has contextualized, translated, and iterated its HCD toolkit across ten countries and partnered with research partners to study its impact on educational equity. Schools2030, and its use of HCD in school settings, offers an innovative, localized, and long-term applied research solution to support more teacher- and school- driven innovations for the future of climate and education. Together with its partners, AKF believes that Schools2030 offers a unique locally-led global coalition to advance climate action in and through education.
At the global level, at COP27, AKF co-hosted a global education panel with UNESCO, Global Partnership for Education, and Dubai Cares about the changing role of education for the future of the planet. Since then, AKF continues to link local realities of local schools to the global decision-making processes of educational policy, research and practice for the planet. Whether it is through its role as an Advisory Board Member to UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership; Co-Chair of Room 4 for the Rockefeller Foundation and Brookings’ 17 Rooms Initiative about Climate and Education; or AKF’s role as a co-founder for the new Teachers for the Planet program, AKF is gaining lessons learned about the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in driving both global and local agendas for advancing quality climate education for all. This presentation shares the latest thinking in how to further drive the agenda toward improving climate resilience and climate education.

Author

• ANDREW JAMES CHARLES CUNNINGHAM, Aga Khan Foundation