ESSAY

ESSAY NEW EARTH

This practise sparked my interest because of my interest in sustainability and how I can implement it in my teacher practise, as I’m in teacher training at the academy. When I started researching the five main topics I realized quickly that sustainability isn’t the only thing that is going to shape a new earth, it’s also a new perspective and way of systems-thinking. I learned more about this topic because of one of the videos from the resource list, it opened my eyes to this topic that is clearly very important to understand and keep in mind when researching an approach to alter the mind set of people on the world and it’s resources.

After resourcing the first five main topics, and writing down what I would like to investigate from every subject, I went with food. I already had a feeling that people these days aren’t that connected to nature and their food anymore. That feeling was confirmed while researching the topic, so my project idea was to create an educational tool about the origin of food. Because of my work and experience with teaching children I wanted to work with them as a target group. A big part of the worldview most adults have is created in their childhood and puberty, at school and home.

I started researching what my educational tool, for children, would look like. I started mind mapping and ended up at a card game, which would make the learning fun. After researching some options I found out that the Dutch game “Kwartet” is a game that can have many themes, which are already being used as an educational tool. The goal of my game was not only to teach children about how food grows, but also from what country something is from, what the health benefits are and if something is actually not very environmental friendly. I figured if you highlight all of these subjects you could let children make their own conclusion and with that get a better sense of what they consume. That’s why I made the game for 8 years and older, these children can think for themselves and make conclusions based on information. These conclusions can help children in the development of their worldview, make better choices food wise (for their health and the planet) and also influence their parents. And most importantly, shape the future.

I decided to make the theme of the Kwartet something familiar and fun to most Dutch kids. Broodbeleg. After some research I came to the conclusion that broodbeleg covers a wide variety of food, from Cacao beans from South America (hagelslag) and butter from The Netherlands. I visualized the game; if I had ten weeks to work on it I would make the card game in real life and test it out on children to see their reactions. Because I became pretty passionate about the topic of children and their connection to food, I could continue my research before and after children playing the game in real life, using insights from testing the game in this research and beyond.


Video mentioned about systems thinking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sfiReUu3o0


Important article that influenced my research:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/lack-of-food-knowledge-shocking-says-survey-7850665.html