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
