How can teachers harness behavioral science to ramp up climate change and environmental action among students? That’s what a two-part Lab, jointly organized by FAO’s YUNGA global partnership, OpenEvo, UNEP and UN CC:Learn, aimed to unpack.
The Improving the Impact – Behavioural Science for Environmental Education Lab took place on 25th January and 1st February 2023 and was organized as part of the World Food Forum event series. It brought together over 150 teachers and educators to explore how human behavoural science could be taken into account when developing and implementing educational programmes and used to increase the impact of lessons and educational resources.
The two-part event was headlined by Dr. Susan Hanisch and Dr. Dustin Eirdosh, from University of Leipizig, and former primary school teacher and PhD candidate Lisa Nehring, from Johns Hopkins University, who have been dedicating their time to research about behavioral science and the linkages with environmental education.
They walked participants through the importance of training educators on human behavior and how behavioral science can help with environmental education at schools, while showcasing case studies from their research and field work and providing informative resources to help educators leverage behavioral science as a tool to inform educational projects.
Presentations were followed by discussions in breakout rooms, in which attendees were divided into smaller groups to discuss specific topics, such as “Teaching human behavior as an interdisciplinary theme” and “Barriers to/Successes of BehSci in environmental education”. These group discussions also worked as a dialogue space where participants could exchange with each other and learn from each other’s experiences.
Moving forward, the World Food Forum event series has two more events planned for this year as part of their Teachers Labs series, so stay tuned in order not to miss them out!
