Youth, Making and Collective Climate Actions : DIY workshops for elementary school students’ collective energy action

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

Collective-actions is an alternative practice for climate change which is the ultimate collective action problem of our society. This research focuses on youth's collective climate actions. The objective of this doctoral research is to produce knowledge about how the youth are empowered to shape collective climate actions and how DIY(Do-It-Yourself) workshops are related to participant’s collective-action formation on energy issues. When it comes to youth empowerment for collective energy action, DIY workshops can play a distinctive role, in collaboration with existing environmental education. The conventional environmental education primarily aims to provide scientific knowledge on energy problems in an effort to promote students' pro-environmental actions, whereas DIY workshops can closely connect energy issues with their real-life experience through hand-on practices involving renewable energy technologies, which are more likely to bring behavior change. Moreover, a joint effort to build an object-oriented renewable energy technology can offer students a chance to practice social skills (e.g., negotiations, discussions and cooperation) which in turn, enable students to organize successful collective energy actions in their own community. The findings of this research will contribute to the growing literature on collective climate actions, especially from the perspective of youth. It may also be helpful for educators to design actionable curriculums on energy issues for elementary school students which can be replicated in other contexts. Last but not least, the youth participants of this research will benefit from creative educational experience while tangibly contributing to the sustainable transformation of the communities they belong to.