The team of the HARP project (Hopeful And Resilience Perspective in Climate Change Education – Enhancing resilience and hope in climate change education) believes that we have been asleep on the issue of climate change, or rather, we are still partially asleep, and that climate education is an important component of activating and providing an adequate response to this crucial environmental problem. In other words, the salt of climate change is already falling into our coffee.
How to inform, and especially educate at various school levels about climate change in a way that ultimately leads to active solutions for climate change? How to help cope with emotions stemming from realizing the depth of the problem, while also being aware of our sleepiness and the still slow response of society to this threat? How do emotions evolve for people whose professions involve a constant awareness that climate change exists and will significantly influence the well-being of our descendants?
These are all questions that we, together with the University of Vienna and Utrecht University, will seek answers to in pedagogical, sociological, and social psychological aspects.
And what is our goal? To contribute to the development of climate education based on critical feedback and without fear of evaluating its results. We consider it crucial for it not to neglect the emotional aspect of our relationship with the world and for Masaryk University to meaningfully and visibly contribute to improving the quality of climate change education.
Such effort makes sense to us, and we look forward to it.
In purely factual terms, the project involves the Department of Environmental Studies at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, the Center for Teacher Education at the Austrian Educational Competence Centre for Biology, University of Vienna, and The Freudenthal Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, Utrecht University. The project will last for three years, but they aim to continue with further research collaboration. The project succeeded in competition with 173 projects included in the Twinning Green Deal challenge.
Bohuslav Binka
Researchers from the Institute for Psychological Research (INPSY) at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, are dedicated to studying the mental health of individuals with minority sexual orientation or gender identity. The aim is to map the current state and, prospectively, contribute to the debate on healthcare reform.
The absolute winner of Prizes of the Technological Agency of the Czech republic (TAČR) became the application which some professionals from FSS UM even also participated in. The psychodiagnostic application made by a team of Šárka Portešová from INPSY and Janáček`s academy of musical art is able to reveal talented children. Real talent of pupils cannot be revealed at all during their compulsory school attendance. The application does not aim itself only on cognitive but also on extra-intellectual skills.