Extending primary students in science through sustainability themes

I have been invited to run an extension program this year for Montagu Primary School in the area of sustainability - exploring it with mainly a science focus as well as incorporating art. I will be attending the school one day per week, taking 3 groups of 10 students for an eight week period.

I am at the planning stage... doing some thinking and talking with the teachers... so I thought I would share with you my process as I try to approach this task.

Well sustainability is a hot topic and close to my heart. I am sure many primary schools are already doing something about it.... water monitoring, organic gardens, marine studies, recycling, landcare projects etc. So what might it mean to extend students in this area? My scientific expertise is not in the environmental/biological field, rather it is as a physicist and paper scientist/engineer - I worked in the paper industry for 4 years before moving into economic research. Can I use this as a focus?

I guess a big idea for me is the notion of systems and connections... there are natural systems, manufacturing systems, economic systems, social systems... and what is most interesting is the way these interact. How well do we really understand what goes on in creating a product such as paper or packaging? If we did understand the complex industrial, social and environmental systems that supports our throw-away items could it change the way we use products - help decrease consumption?

So now I wonder... could I expose students to the paper making trail - forestry, sawmill, pulp, paper making, printing, packaging, shops, homes, recycling/rubbish... and trace the inputs to each aspect, the waste, the impact socially and environmentally? Can I introduce students to the triple bottom line? So imagine excursions, questions, hands on paper making activities, scientific investigation of pulp materials, dyes, bleaches, glues. Hmmm.

I had never seen a manufacturing system before I entered the paper industry on leaving university and I can tell you it was a huge shock - big, noisy, smelly, polluting, relentless... yet exciting and intriguing. I was fascinated with the ingenuity of the processes, how everything fit, the feedback loops, the complexity of variables, how waste for one process became inputs for another. I wanted to understand it; not just how the mechanisms worked but the way the machine interacted with the operators, the supply process, the economics (tariffs, quotas and competition from overseas).

As a research scientist during my time in one paper making company I was able to contribute to a 30% increase in machine productivity. What happened now to the excess product? It was competing against slashed price imports from Finland... so the company sold it in Indonesia much cheaper than their own paper making industry could make it, thus suppressing prices for the forest logs... thus causing the private owners to seek new markets (Japan mills mainly) and deforest the equatorial rain forests much more quickly. So while I was feeling satisfied on scientifically nailing the problems of productivity, on the other hand I was responsible for deforestation in Indonesia.... something I only found out much later.

So that discloses my own sense of responsibility in this issue. Interestingly enough Montagu Bay Primary has developed a very forward thinking approach to the different strands of curriculum - having some big ideas which go across all discipline areas - change, form, function, responsibility, causation and connection.

In teasing out the possible program today with the principal and assistant principal, we were asking which of these might be key lenses in the program we are envisaging. We talked a lot about ethical reasoning (responsibility theme) as something that might be developed with staff as well as students... providing frameworks for students to talk about different ethical stances. (eg. a care-based point of view, principle-based, or ends-based.) We would listen to the conversations students were having about the issues and understand how students' ethical reasoning might be situated within their development stage, culture, or particular style of ethical reasoning. The project could help students experience alternative stances through asking them to project into stake holder's positions. Asking them how they might modify their own consumption or could encourage others to modify would give opportunities for students to come up against alternative ethical views.

The hands-on paper making activity becomes the concrete aspect...with students developing experimental inquiry skills. The tracing of the product from trees to recycling is more conceptual (research-based) where students develop understanding of systems and connections and use various ways to represent the whole trail. And a key personal development aspect is in the area of ethical development.

We are planning for the students to run workshops with other classes in the school on making paper, with different inquiry or ethical issue focuses. There would be an expo at the end of the program for teachers, students and parents which would hope to educate people in consumption issues.

I can see the students perhaps producing paper which represents all aspects of the paper trail - paper with eucalyptus scent and leaves and insects (for the forest side), paper with grease, bleach, dyes, machinery bits for the industrial paper making process, paper with products that kids use (Pokemon cards, birthday wrapping etc), paper that is being recycled (milk cartoons, magazines, newsprint), paper that is in the tip (very smelly and putrid!!!).

I am also thinking about one group being encouraged to create a cartoon video which shows the different processes - see the story of stuff as a useful starting point.