About Project
[Communities Collaborating for Ecological Thriving]
Our approach uses participatory methods by co-designing practices and strategies to integrate Indigenous Local and Ecological Knowledges with remote sensing and climate modeling data into school garden design, implementation and assessment.
Our goals with this approach are to:
Create school gardens to positively impact children’s wellbeing including in relation to climate literacies and land relations;
Implement sustainable, climate-smart school gardening practices that are culturally responsive and integrate ILEK with climate science;
Co-design equitable, culturally situated, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary climate literacies grounded in sustainable small-scale agricultural practices; and
Co-design a scalable model for school gardens as a trans-sectoral, community-based climate anticipatory response in South Africa.
Intergenerational Climate Literacy:
The research team’s collective expertise in education includes garden-based and culturally responsive science learning, land education, early childhood and primary education, teacher education, and climate change education. This team works with teachers, families and community elders to co-design children’s curriculum inquiries emerging from land-based education in the gardens.