Participatory Design for Climate Change Adaptation
Intergenerational climate responsive school gardening as an approach to food security & climate literacy in South African communities
South Africa: Gauteng, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal 2024-2027 funding from: NFRF International Joint Initiative for Research in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation |
This community-based project co-designs climate-smart school food gardens that bring together Indigenous and Local Ecological Knowledge with remote sensing-informed climate and modeling science. The gardens will be in schools located in 3 provincial ecoregions in South Africa: Gauteng, Limpopo, and KwaZulu-Natal. Alongside responding to a need for epistemological diversity in designing climate change adaptation, the project engages a novel approach that also considers how interdisciplinary community-based design for climate literacy can enact sustainable climate change adaptation that extends beyond school settings.
Selected Community Partners: Talifhani Farming Foundation, Isigqi Sobuntu Organisation, Funda Community College, Life Changing Projects, Malusi Youth Development Organization, Nova Early Learning Centre Collaborators: Busisiwe Nkonki-Mandleni (SA PI); Kingsley Ayisi (SA Co-PI); Tia C. Madkins (US PI); Steven Zuiker (US Co-PI); Kevin Lanza (US Co-PI); Damian Maddalena (Canadian Co-PI) |
Enacting Sustainable Futures in Early Childhood EducationCanada, Aotearoa, United States Early Childhood Spencer Foundation Pilot Vision Grant (2023-2024) |
The research project is entitled, Enacting Sustainable Futures in Early Childhood Education: Transforming Educational Systems in Relation with Living Lands, Waters and Languages across Global Contexts. Situated within current climate crises, their inherent colonialities, and their inequitably distributed effects, this grant supports the development of a research inquiry into potentials for shifting early childhood education towards just learning environments that build and nurture sustainable ecological futures centered on thriving lands, waters and languages.
Project Collaborators: Nxumalo, F. (PI), Salazar Peréz, M. (Co-PI), Skerrett, M. (Co-PI). |
|
Designing for Climate Justice Education in a Canadian City: Learning with Black Ecologies
Toronto University of Toronto School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant (2021-2023) |
The specific goals of the project are to: (1) advance understandings of how climate justice education can respond to the collective desires of Black families living in cities (2) generate insights on how Black ecologies can inform the design of culturally sustaining climate justice education, and (3) provide recommendations for the development of climate change education policies that are responsive to climate injustice. In collaboration with Black families with young children attending Toronto schools, this project uses participatory approaches to document how climate justice education can be grounded in and responsive to the local ecological relationships and concerns of Black urban families. |
|
The Afro-Diaspora Futures in Education Collective
Melbourne and Toronto Melbourne-Toronto Research Partnership Development Fund (grant: 2021-2023; Collective: ongoing) |
The Afro-Diasporas Futures in Education Collective is a mobile incubator that convenes a series of events to initiate and sustain transnational dialogues on the ways in which education research and practice in Canada and Australia can be enriched by Black studies scholarship. Under the themes of Black futures, Black and Indigenous relationalities, Black methodologies and Black audio-visualities, the Collective will host interactive events that bring Black Studies scholars and artists into conversation with graduate students and early career scholars in education. |
Climate Justice Pedagogies in eSwatiniEswatini SSHRC IDG (2020-2024) |
Climate change brings vulnerabilities that are disproportionately distributed across socioeconomic lines, particularly in the Global South. In rural Eswatini, where this project is based, climate related drought and its accompanying effects are among several sources of social and ecological injustices for which young children have few opportunities and avenues to respond. Therefore, this SSHRC funded project investigates how culturally relevant climate justice education can actively engage children as participants in their community. Engaging visual participatory methods and intergenerational ecological knowledges, the project inquires into climate justice education practices that center the creative activisms of young children.
|
Learning with PlaceToronto Connaught New Researcher (Project Dates: 2020-2023) |
This Connaught New Researcher funded project seeks to advance understandings of environmental education that is focused on marginalized children’s relations with their specific local environments. Visual and textual data will be collected over one academic year as children and educators in a kindergarten classroom in Toronto conduct an inquiry on a local environmental issue that impacts them. This research will contribute important knowledge on advancing professional supports for educators to teach children about environmental issues in strength-based and justice-oriented ways.
|
Black Childhoods in the AnthropoceneConceptual Research (2019-Ongoing) |
This research aims to counter the ongoing absenting or essentializing of Black childhoods in dominant North American nature education discourses. Our lab is interested in examining ways in which Black feminist geographies might be generatively brought into early childhood education and early childhood studies as ways of knowing and doing that provide openings for inclusive, critical, non-anthropocentric and speculative child-nature pedagogies. We are particularly interested in developing pedagogies that foreground futurity, belonging and decolonial land relationships for Black children living and learning in anthropogenic North American contexts.
|
Texas Water StoriesCentral Texas UT Austin - Planet Texas 2050 (2018-2020) |
This research is part of a larger project examining narratives of Texas waterways. Our lab aims to counter the marginalization of Indigenous knowledges and young people's perspectives in dominant climate change scholarship. Using participatory methods, we focus on intergenerational (elders, youth, children) Indigenous narratives of Yana Wana (Central Texas waters).
|
Decolonial Place-Based EducationCentral Texas SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2017-2020) |
This research investigates the development of environmental and place-based education pedagogies for young children that are responsive to local concerns Through a participatory action research project with teachers and children in a kindergarten class in Austin, Texas, the aim is to develop insights into children’s relations with their local environments, particularly in relation to climate-change related issues.
→ Link to Climate Action Childhood Network |