PILOT EXPERIENCE TO INCREASE THE ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS OF YOUNG STUDENTS (12-18 YEARS) THROUGH INNOVATING FORMATION BY UPM RESEARCHERS IN THE CLASSROOM

The Dive & Breath project is part of the Madrid Deep Demonstration (DD) portfolio and it is supported by the Spanish Climate KIC Education Office (CK). The project promotes the participatory innovation of teenagers and incorporates experiential learning to guide them to the collective design and implementation of a network of the environmental quality sensors of their neighbourhood (air and water monitoring). The process is carried out by professors and is applied to pilot groups of students, and later, the students, based on their experience and learning, teach other students. This way, the replication phase of the innovative methodologies in the educational field is introduced. The interdisciplinary approach merges through games, observation, and data collection. The project has used ICTs tools, due to COVID circumstances. The practical learning has been developed through DIY (construction of sensors) and citizen science. The proposal incorporates innovative learning methodologies such as experiential learning, based on a collective construction of knowledge that brings together all the agents involved. This approach transcends the usual proposals in the educational field. In this case, from the design phase, diverse visions come together to build a conceptual framework on which practical knowledge is built through experience. Further on, Service-learning for UPM students, in the context of secondary education, boots enormous potential for university students to interact with teenagers, performing a service of solidarity while learning and developing technical, transversal, social and ethical skills that will be of great value in their professional and personal development. Among the advantages of this approach, it highlights and increases their motivation and social awareness. The project is a fully scalable proposal with remarkable impact in the target area of Madrid City (Southern Districts). It is developed in critical districts and supported by key stakeholders for further expansion. Such as, the neighbour’s platform " Nave Boetticher " (NB) that ensures the involvement of education leaders from 2 secondary education centres in the neighbourhood ( Montserrat & Comunidad infantil ). The group of university professor and researchers would young students promoting the construction and monitoring of sensors for air & water quality. D&B data will work in synergy with Spanish Climate KIC Education Office, and MonteMadrid foundation, to promote the spread of Young Innovators experiment in other target areas in Spain. Climate-KIC has played the role as an orchestrator of networks to facilitate and shared investment of deeper system change and on a larger scale and offering guidance and support due to their knowledge and experience. Climate-KIC has offered interesting innovative tools to be applied to our project and could facilitate connections with other Spanish colleagues who are working in a similar path as us. We totally agree in the fact that to achieve real system change, we all need to work together to gain recognition of the challenges and necessary investment. The potential value (monetary, non-monetary) that is associated with these actions provides: 1) empowerment of the disadvantaged population, 2) promotion of the connection between neighbours and their territory, 3) creation of a replicable and sustainable pedagogical model of learning and service and 4) promotion of climate leadership among young people.