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Eco-Sensors4Health Toolkit: Scaffolding Children Participation in Schools’ Environmental Health

Authors:
Maria João Silva
Eduarda Ferreira
Alexandra Souza
Ana Rita Alves

Keywords: environmental health; eco-sensors; children; participation

Abstract:
The research presented in this paper aims at improving health education in primary schools, supporting the use of environmental sensors in environmental health problem solving. A research based design approach was adopted to develop a toolkit, aiming at supporting teachers in scaffolding children’s participation to improve their schools’ environmental health. The toolkit will facilitate children’s activities that make use of eco-sensors to identify and explore environmental health problems, as well as to suggest local solutions. Sound pollution, air pollution, and lack of thermal comfort are three central problems in Portuguese primary schools’ environmental health. The data acquired by children through the use of sensors will inform and validate children’s decisions to improve schools’ environmental health and will be made available to other schools in a collaborative platform. The design of the toolkit was situated in Portuguese primary schools. It is an iterative design process, based on teaching and learning interventions with primary school children, in-service teachers, and students of a teacher education graduation, all in their natural and complex settings. Those interventions confirmed the practicality and effectiveness of the planned activities, and, together with the results of previous projects, informed the content and form of the designed toolkit that will be used in diverse schools to improve schools’ environmental health.

Pages: 47 to 52

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2018

Publication date: November 18, 2018

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4553

ISBN: 978-1-61208-682-8

Location: Athens, Greece

Dates: from November 18, 2018 to November 22, 2018