The project started! Let´s work HARP!
The Horizon Twinning Hopeful and Resilience Perspective in Climate Change Education to Inspire (Promote) Action Competence (HARP) project has officially kicked off in September 2024. Selected from 848 submissions, HARP was awarded nearly 1.5 million euros to fund its three years mission.
Coordinated by Masaryk University in Brno, the three-year project seeks to research and improve climate change education practices across selected European countries. Its core objective is to promote more comprehensive, inclusive and action-oriented approaches to addressing the climate crisis. At the same time, HARP aims to strengthen students' emotional resilience and improve their ability to engage with complex environmental topics.
The project consortium brings together Masaryk University, Utrecht University and Universität Wien. The HARP project team consists of colleagues from the Österreichisches Kompetenschzentrum für Didaktik der Biologie (AECC Biologie), colleagues from the Freudenthal Institute at Utrecht University and a diverse team of people from FSS, both from the Department of Environmental Studies and from the Department of Psychology. In addition to researchers, our team includes a school psychologist, therapists and teachers. The diversity of our consortium and its connection to practice ensure that the project’s outcomes will bridge theory and practice, benefiting both academia and real-world education.
Within the research part of the project, five research teams will focus on mapping the situation in the field of climate education at secondary and higher schools. We are interested in the views of teachers and students. We want to know the barriers that need to be overcome on the way to quality education about climate change. We are interested in stories of good practices that have tackled these barriers. We want to find out what therapeutic tools increase psychological resilience and have the potential to motivate people to take an active interest in the topic (in our case, in response to climate change).
Networking activities are also central to the project, offering valuable opportunities for teachers and researchers to collaborate through internships and job shadowing.
Last but not least, one of the primary goals of the project is to disseminate knowledge to a wide range of teachers from the field of education and centres for environmental education. This will be achieved through summer schools, conferences, and various media channels such as social media, podcasts, and influencer partnerships.
