Facing and Resisting the Climate Crisis: Co-Teaching and Cooperative Learning in an Art-based Sustainability Class

• In Event: Bridging Analog and Digital Technologies: Youth Voices in China, the United States, and elsewhere.

Proposal

Introduction
Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) aims at coping with Climate Crisis as a 21st Century challenge. Holistic pedagogy handles this challenge by means of interdisciplinary co-teaching and cooperative learning. Accordingly, we present our study, conducted on an interdisciplinary holistic course, part of a master’s degree program in the Visual Arts in teacher training college. Entitled "ESE and Art", the course was uniquely co-taught by an environmental educator and a literary scholar, and included literature, visual arts, music, environment and society.
It revolved around the following axes: from the concrete (ecological, environmental and cultural knowledge) to the abstract (imagination, the Arts and literature), the inside to the outside, the existing to the imagined, cooperative learning to co-teaching and vice versa. The course takes place in actual pedagogical venues—classroom, building, museum, street, yard—however it comes about in virtual spaces like zoom, padlet, and moodle.

The aim of this research was studying the combination of Art and Sustainability by means of exploring the cooperative learning in the students’ products in the course. We analyzed the products of 24 students, very diverse in age, socioeconomic background, racial profile (Jews/Arabs, secular/religious) and places of employment (the formal and informal education). The majority of them are female educators (22), k-12 teachers of various fields such as science, ESE, literature, dance, art, some work in special education. We inductively and deductively analyzed the students’ drawings and their explanations, photos, videos and their titles, written texts, and, finally, a final project integrating art and sustainability.
Findings suggest that the three spaces of cooperative learning during the course—outdoor learning in the urban environment, virtual space, and the classroom teamwork—were implemented holistically in the students’ final products. Each learning space contributed to the students’ success in interconnecting sustainability, society, art and literature. Furthermore, some of the teams created intercultural integration, expressed in the symbols, language and cooperative discourse between the Arab, Secular Jews and orthodox Jews. Others emphasized the act of protest in their final product and examined public response to their intervention which shows luck of interest in climate change. We conclude with the significant accumulative value of each of the various spaces, generating a perception of the student as a whole and complete human being as well as the holistic experience.
Theoretical Background
This research draws on two theoretical complementing approaches – Holistic Pedagogy and Eco-humanism. The environmental crisis is the background for both the research and the course it studies. In order to cope with this crisis, ESE needs to be holistic, i.e. deep education which touches upon the whole human-being including all his/her dimensions – physical, intellectual, aesthetic, emotional and spiritual. An important component of this educational approach is the connection to Nature; this adds to the inner connection of the learner with oneself and between the learner and the society surrounding him/ her. Finally, Holistic Education is comprised of four pillars: learning to learn, learning to do, learning to live and learning to be. Eco-humanism is a holistic moral perception and pedagogy of sustainability, combining responsibility to both Humanity and more-than-human Nature. It acts to promote the thriving of the natural world and the well-being for all humanity. It is applied, for example, by means of dialogical culture, listening and contemplative practices. Both educational approaches contribute to the fresh look on Art offered in this research.

Study Goal and Study Questions
Goal: Studying the combination of Art and Sustainability by means of exploring the students’ products in the course.
Questions:
1. How are the various learning settings expressed in the students’ products?
2. How is the holistic view of Art and Sustainability expressed in the students’ products?
Methodology
Participants, as presented above, were 24 MEd. Visual Arts students from diverse backgrounds. In this qualitative study we used the students’ drawings and their explanation (22 drawings), photos (27 entitled photos), videos and their titles (4), students’ written texts (poems, comments and texts integrating scholarly material with art observation), a final project integrating art and sustainability. Data Analysis Process: we looked at an assignment and its product, and then analyzed both each product by itself inductively and then the entire products as a whole deductively.

Key Findings
Findings suggest that while in the early stages of the course the environmental objects and issues were separate from the artistic elements in the students’ products, in their final projects, we can detect the interdisciplinary vision in the holistic association of elements. Additionally, in the end of the course, the holistic approaches experienced during the semester were applied and embedded within most of the teams’ work and product: they used various pedagogies, implementing co-teaching and contemplative attitudes. Naturally, some students are challenged by the contemplative aspect of the course as well as by the course’s actual theme (i.e., climate change). Notwithstanding, for most participants these practices were very effective, as the products show. Therefore, our recommendation is a shift in teacher training perception: interdisciplinary ecohumanist co-teaching.

Discussion
Incorporating ESE in non-scientific fields within the curriculum is challenging. Our study offers an example for an integration of education for sustainability within a Visual Arts MEd program – a holistic eco-humanist course. The climate change crisis is no longer a future threat to be imagined, but rather it is an unfolding day-to-day reality to face. Consequently, teacher-training institutes must find innovative and alternative ways to include this theme in all programs, in order to enable the teachers to implement it in their educational fields. Finally, this study suggests the collaboration between Arts and Sciences Faculties as both alternative approach for teacher education and interdisciplinary holistic education.

References
Aloni, N., Alkaher, I., Assaf, A. Bar-yosef Paz, N, Gal, A., Gan, D. Lev, N., Margaliot, A. Segal, A. (2023). “Nature, Humans and Education: Ecohumanism as integrative guiding paradigm for values education and teacher training.” In: R. Rozzi et al. (Editors), Field Environmental Philosophy: Education for Biocultural Conservation. New York: Springer.
Bentz, J. (2020). Learning about climate change in, with and through art. Climatic Change, 162(3), 1595-1612.

Authors

• Dafna Gan, Open university of Israel

• Netta Baryosef-Paz, Kibbutzim College of Education, technology and the arts