Movement Profile
SchülerUni Nachhaltigkeit + Klimaschutz is an initiative at the Freie Universität Berlin that arose out of the EU-funded project Schools at University for Climate and Energy (SAUCE). It seeks to provide young students the tools to build a sustainable future.
World in transition: Learning for a sustainable future at Freie Universität Berlin
A secure, climate-friendly energy supply, protection of biodiversity and the provision of life’s basic requirements to all are some of the key global challenges of our time. To deal with them requires critical examination of our way of doing business, as well as consumption and lifestyle practices in Western industrialised countries. Climate change and the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima have made it clear that these problems cannot be solved without fundamental political and social change. Such a transformation calls for a broad societal awareness of these problems and the magnitude of change required. Sustainability is the one idea that links all of these global problems and connects them to mechanisms of change.
How can such change take place? In its 2011 report on “the new societal contract for a great transformation”, the German Advisory Council of Global Change (WBGU) described the importance of education that contributes to sustainable transformation by promoting societal participation. The report singled out universities’ special role in promoting education for sustainable development by better orienting science and policy to the societal goals of the great transformation. The UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development that ends this year seeks to promote important skills necessary to actively contribute to social, economic and environmental change by teaching students how to work together, resolve conflicts, identify problems and express independent judgement to solve complex problems and shape their world.
We believe the transfer of such skills should be facilitated by civil society, too. That’s why SchülerUni Nachhaltigkeit + Klimaschutz has taken up the call for education for sustainable development by developing an innovative programme that brings students to universities two weeks a year to gain in-depth knowledge on key issues to sustainability, learn critical thinking skills and become empowered to make change within their everyday world and in society at large. By bringing elementary school students to local universities to learn about critical issues relevant to sustainability and climate change, SchülerUni hopes to educate the next generation to be a key part of the great transformation.
SchülerUni: Bringing students to university to learn about sustainability
The Environmental Policy Research Centre (FFU) at Freie Universität Berlin initiated the first Schoolchildren’s University for Climate and Energy as a pilot project on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It was derived from the popular European model of children’s universities. The basic idea was to build a bridge between universities as research institutions and the school as a place of learning and to provide schools with knowledge and skills that can be applied to the critical themes of climate and energy.
The positive response to the pilot programme in Berlin inspired the FFU to bring the idea to a wider audience. Thanks to the European programme “Intelligent Energy Europe”, the Schoolchildren’s University model was carried out successfully by seven European partner universities in London, Vienna, Roskilde, Aalborg, Riga, and Twente as SAUCE (Schools @ University for Climate + Energy), which was supported by the European Commission from 2008 to 2011. After the SAUCE programme ended, the FFU in Berlin decided to continue with the basic structure of the SchülerUni, but broaden the programme’s focus from energy to more general sustainability topics. From 2011 until 2015, SchülerUni offers 10- to 13-year-old students a variety of interactive workshops and lectures twice a year at the Freie Universität in Berlin. The week-long programme includes roughly 60 events that introduce students to issues related to sustainability in a way that deepens knowledge on topics discussed in the classroom. In Berlin, roughly 3,000 students and 300 teachers a year take part in the free programme.
The basic idea was to build a bridge between universities as research institutions and the school as a place of learning and to provide schools with knowledge and skills that can be applied to the critical themes of climate and energy.
Building an educational network: the SchülerUni model
How does it work? Twice a year the Freie Universität Berlin invites classes of students aged 11 to 13 to take part in the week-long programme. The SchülerUni network includes a diverse group of educators, including professors and independent teachers, artists and environmental educators, energy experts, members of environmental groups and local businesses and other students.
These educators design interactive workshops, seminars and lectures to teach students about concrete issues related to sustainability, such as energy use, nutrition, consumption habits and transportation. For example, past activities have included scientific experiments related to renewable energy, art and theatre workshops on resource use and consumption, writing workshops on sustainable transportation, role plays on international climate and biodiversity policy as well as quiz shows, climate breakfasts and a bike-powered film viewing. Because the events take place on the university campus, students have access to laboratories, seminar rooms and special locations like the botanic gardens, planetarium and the university’s solar roof. Workshops are interdisciplinary, highlight interactions between different aspects of sustainability and seek to build students’ awareness of ways to interact with and change complex systems. Our fundamental goal is to highlight the complexity of diverse topics in a fun way that actively engages students without placing blame.
Outside of the week-long programme, SchülerUni provides curriculum support for teachers throughout the year. This includes training sessions where teachers get educational materials to help integrate sustainability issues into their lesson plans, learn new teaching methods, meet local actors and are exposed to practical examples from schools and scientific practice. Teachers also get to exchange lessons amongst themselves and build contacts with educators outside the Berlin school system.
Through its diverse methods and activities both during the week-long events and throughout the year, SchülerUni aims to get students excited about topics related to sustainability. We hope to instil a sense of curiosity, empowerment and engagement with the natural and social world and promote the kind of systems and critical thinking necessary to realise a sustainability transition. In addition, we hope to give especially economically disadvantaged students a positive association with the university so that they may consider further studies beyond secondary school.
In this way, SchülerUni contributes to education for sustainable development in several ways. It educates the next generation of students to be a part of grand transformation by giving them a deeper subject knowledge of the challenges we face, teaching them to actively solve problems in their own world, and giving them the tools and empowering them to make changes in their own lives, their homes and communities, and in society at large. It also builds and maintains a local network of educators to support the dissemination of teaching methods and constant experimentation. Finally, we promote an engaging, interdisciplinary and fun way to think about sustainability issues.
Tags: Movement Profile