Community Action for Sustainability

Community Action for Sustainability

Tools for Community-Engaged Education Initiatives for an Environmentally Just Future

Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives

Due to the increasing awareness of the global climate crisis and its disproportionate impact on people from non-dominant communities has led to the emergence of numerous community-engagement initiatives focused on creating a more environmentally just future. Researchers generally agree that in order to lessen the impact of the climate crisis, long-term, collaborative, and concerted efforts with multiple stakeholders, including educational researchers, teachers, students, parents, community activists, and scientists is essential. There are not, however, a lot of resources that support fostering equitable and justice-centered collaborations among multiple stakeholders.

This website has a number of tools to support researchers and community partners engaged in collaborative work supporting educational initiatives that address the climate crisis in ways that position youth as central to creating more environmentally just futures.

UC Campus Projects Description

UCI’s Urban Farming, Climate, and Food Justice Project

University of California, Irvine

This partnership connects university STEM teacher educators, researchers, local farmers, aspiring and current teachers, and K-12 students in an urban farm located at a high school in Orange County, CA. Together the group seeks to improve climate justice education by designing curriculum and instructional tools for teaching and learning around farming, climate and food justice to improve students’ critical awareness of and action-taking.
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UCSB’s Campus Canopy Project

University of California, Santa Babara

This partnership connects UCSB researchers and a non-profit start-up, Campus Canopy, to local schools. Together, these partners engage and educate school communities about regenerative practices and climate adaptation through community schoolyard planting projects. The partners also provide professional learning opportunities for K-12 teachers to integrate these planting projects into their classroom curriculum. Collectively, this work seeks to empower school communities to take climate action and become stewards of the land.
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UCSC’s Justice-Centered Climate Change Pedagogy Project

University of California, Santa Cruz

This partnership between teacher educators and a community environmental justice group, Regeneración, to support teachers’ use of justice-centered science pedagogy to implement critical quantitative STEM practice, engage in multiple ways of knowing in STEM, and plan for community-centered climate action.
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UCLA’s From the Ground Up Project

University of California, Los Angeles

This partnership convenes a team of researchers, teachers, urban farmers, and young people to co-design pedagogical approaches and curricular materials rooted in school and community gardens that engage the complex socio-ecological histories of Southern California. Working with Black Thumb Farm and the UCLA K–12 Ethnic Studies Certificate Program, we collectively grapple with the tensions and possibilities around land-based pedagogies in Ethnic Studies and in school settings.
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Resources

Design Principles

Fostering Relational Trust

Defining Environmental Justice

Contact Information

● For more information, please contact Hosun Kang (PI) at hosunk@uci.edu.
● This project was supported by the University of California Multi-Campus Research and Planning Initiative Planning/Pilot Award #M25PL8975.

Acknowledgments

This is the MRPI project, funded by the UC Office of President (UCOP)

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