Deciding on action

This involves taking what we’ve learned and considering what we will do with the information and exploring alternatives. It is an ideal way to engage in cross-curricular learning. There is real potential to create opportunities for students to develop interviewing skills and co-operative skills, determine budgets, be creative and innovative, create technical plans and take action to become agents of change.

Effective planning is a vital part of the action process. Consider whether there are established procedures or protocols you can use to add robustness and usefulness to any data collected.

Resources

• Environmental thinking and planning with ecosystem-based management (EBM) – activity

• Eco-champions – PLD webinar

• Communicating with scientists – interview techniques and protocols – activity

• The Ethics thinking toolkit or the Futures thinking toolkit could be used to support students in their inquiries and decision making.

Questions to consider

• Who uses or manages the area/situation/process that we’d like to address?

• Who do we need to involve?

• Who do we need to consult before making decisions?

• Are there tikanga or special customary traditions we need to follow?

• What is our timeframe?

• Is this a one-off action or do we need to plan for ongoing/future action?

• Does the weather or the season influence when we should carry out our project?

• What skills will we need?

• What processes, methodologies or protocols do we need to follow to ensure that our actions provide quality data?

• Who are the people who can help us with the processes or protocols?

• How will we store or analyse any data we collect?

• Will the project require funding or other resources?

• How can we obtain funding/resources?

• How will our actions lead to the change we are seeking?

Acknowledgement: Andrea Soanes