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Kovacs, Ildiko Gabriella

University of British Columbia

This dissertation investigates how the implementation of the Participatory Planning Pedagogy (PPP) and a corresponding curriculum – a reconceptualized Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) impacts environmental, sustainability and civics education and sustainable planning practices. Despite five decades of ESE, environmental degradation, social injustice, and poverty persist. Scholars in education and beyond call for a reconceptualized ESE – one that returns to its critical roots, decolonizing its approaches and (re)positioning children and youth as competent and capable citizens of today who can meaningfully contribute to community knowledge production and planning processes. PPP aims to answer this call – intersecting a critical constructivist pedagogy with child friendly participatory (critical) planning to tackle systemic issues in education and democracy. With the twofold goal of providing meaningful sustainability and civics education while supporting children’s rights in and to their cities, PPP aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), advocating for children’s rights to meaningful education (Article 29) and participation (Article 12). Implemented in collaboration with Vancouver’s planning teams through community work in public schools, this exploratory study consists of three scholarly contributions examining PPP’s potential as a reconceptualized ESE that amplifies youth voices. The first contribution examines PPP curriculum implementation in terms of inquiry-based and decolonial frameworks. The second contribution, a qualitative case study, examines individual learning outcomes, revealing that six of seven participating students developed more complex critical knowledge of sustainability issues. The third scholarly contribution is a document analysis examining how 120 students’ engagement input was incorporated into municipal plans. Results of this study show that while many recommendations were adopted, those addressing the unique needs of equity-seeking groups were often overlooked. Results highlight PPP’s potential as a model for repositioning children as democratically engaged capable citizens of today. PPP reflects major scholarship in environmental, sustainability and civics education and child friendly sustainable planning, and shows promise as an enabler of children’s participation through a potentially scalable unique form of institutionalized democratic engagement for elementary-aged children. Future research can explore the impacts of PPP on students’ learning and action competence, ongoing democratic engagement, and child friendly built environment outcomes.

Text

2025-06-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91376

Curriculum Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/