Mexico and the SDGs: A student-led interdisciplinary project.

#SDGAction42676

Description

Intro

This project was performed within the context of a high-school interdisciplinary project to challenge students to create sustainable solutions for Mexico’s social, economic and environmental problems, using the SDGs as a reference frame. Two subjects of the 4th semester curriculum of PrepaTec’s Program were involved: Matter and Sustainability, (green organic chemistry) and Mexico in the Global Agenda (social studies). Both merged parts of their contents in the identification of issues to be tackled from the perspective of sustainability, using 11 of the 17 SDGs and specific targets to create solutions to help the accomplishment of the target in the future.

Objective of the practice

Engage students in taking cooperative action to address a global issue from the perspective of sustainability, so they develop global awareness and reinforce skills and competencies like project design, critical thinking, collaborative action, and decision making, through a student led process of project design.Give students the opportunity to experience the meaning of globally engaged citizenship or change makers, which means to reinforce the knowledge of concepts, skills, values, attitudes, and behaviors of Global Competence.The competencies of the Multicultural Program that this project reinforces are: Multicultural Engagement, and Multicultural Social and Emotional Learning. These will be accomplished through the development of openness, humility, self-awareness, empathy, adaptability, collaboration, problem solving, and reflection, involved in the development of this project.Additionally, Multicultural knowledge will also be enhanced.

Partners

The project was designed adopting the student-led methodology: K2A by World Savvy, and collaborative team work involving teaching, class hours and lab-work with 160 students. Most projects focused on designing or creating products and educational or promotional campaigns. The results of their efforts were presented at a Project Fair at the end of the semester.

Students validated their knowledge by integrating the support of experts in the field of study and partners in the implementation of ideas. Generally speaking, they were touched by the need of collaboration to solve meaningful and urgent problems thus becoming sustainable advocates.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

January- May 2018 and January- May 2019.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

Even though the activity was designed to fit academic purposes, they were invited to present their ideas at an entrepreneurship contest event. One of the school teams created a project producing eco-edible straws and won 1st place in this competition. Already empowered and inspired by their results and the feedback of the public, one student of that team went further ahead and presented their project at the most important national event to promote youth participation called “Premio Nacional de la Juventud 2018”, winning the category of Entrepreneurial Innovativeness.

The design project for the activity was selected to be presented at a National Congress held by Tec de Monterrey as a successful practice for teachers at VIII Congreso PrepaTec, Guadalajara, Mexico, May 2018.

Enabling factors and constraints

The innovation brought about with the collaboration of these two subjects comes from the freedom that students were granted to explore their worries, perspectives, and ideas to realize the importance of generating actions for problem solving. Active education is not new, but giving the students the possibility to design their own projects, with their own goals to offer solutions for real and meaningful UN targets, offered them a sense of higher responsibility.
Although this freedom was important, we wanted to focus more on reinforcing scientific thinking, promoting a more important use of the Chemistry Lab in all the team works when generating their prototypes. It was also important to increase participation to present their results in public forums outside the school context to increase their motivation and compromise.

Sustainability and replicability

This project did not represent big costs for the school neither for the students. For the fair, they brought reused and recyclable materials. The school provided the space for the fair. In conclusion, benefits surpassed the costs.
After this successful experience, the teachers who created the project were invited to collaborate in the design of a course for a training program to integrate SDGs in project designs to be taught at a national level. PrepaTec is a multi campus system that holds 37 high-schools throughout Mexico.

Conclusions

This project enabled students with the opportunity to become agents of change.<br />
The message students and general public got was the importance of joining efforts to tackle the problems the world is facing and will face in the future. This project made them realize the importance and necessity to impact our communities.

Other sources of information

1. Media news
Vargas, M. (2018, November 01). ¡Sí al popote! Popotépetl es degradable, comestible y mexicano. Retrieved from https://www.mexico.com/hecho-en-mexico/popotepetl-el-popote-mexicano-qu…

2. Posters

SDGS & Targets