In the transdisciplinary URGENT project, funded by the Academy of Finland (9/2019-8/2023), we study whether and how bringing together urban and regional planning with formal education and education for sustainable development may create innovate and scalable transformative pathways to more sustainable societies. We ask how planning processes - when approached as a call for dialogue between schools and planning institutions - could support empowering learning of students, teachers and planners as well as researchers, and how such transformative learning and its outcomes can be measured.
We base the URGENT project on participatory action research approach, and co-develop sustainable education and planning, both theoretically and practically, through dialogue between researchers, planners and schools. We will use qualitative and quantitative
methods to analyse the impact of these new means in eliciting progress towards sustainability, and the potential of the new practices to contribute to sustainability transformation in the society at large. This will open up new transdisciplinary scientific avenues and support the educational and planning scholars to transform their dialogue in order to renew science in the face of sustainability challenge.
Publications in English
Oinonen, I. & Paloniemi, R. 2024. Understanding and measuring young people’s sustainability actions. Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Oinonen, I., Seppälä, T., Paloniemi R. 2024. How does action competence explain young people’s sustainability action? Environmental Education Research.
Koskela, Iida-Maria & Paloniemi, Riikka. 2022. Learning and agency for sustainability transformations: building on Bandura’s theory of human agency. Environmental Education Research.
Koskela, Iida-Maria. 2019. Learning and Sustainable Development - A Conceptual Review of International Literature on Education for Sustainable Development. Reports of the Finnish Environment Institute 32/2019.
More publication on the Finnish website (link above).