**8. Places of empowerment and agency**

A place-based perspective challenges the facilitating pedagogue to connect learning to the places where students are engaging with learning. This is especially vital for oppressed and displaced people, who face tumultuous relationships with the lands upon which they live [84]. It can be enhanced, where available, by technology. Facilitators can start by engaging students in open-source citizen science projects. For example, they can utilize freely available citizen science technology, such as the iNaturalist app [85] to identify local flora and fauna, or the marine debris tracking app [86] to collect data on types of trash pollution present in their communities. Now, students are authentically participating in larger-scale studies by contributing to the expansion of evolving data sets. To take things to the next level, educators can engage students in dialogs, shifting the cognitive load to students. Instead of the teacher delivering the answers, they can charge students with making meaning of the data sets and noticing patterns. Then, teachers can help students contextualize those patterns by connecting students to other data sets or research, such as localized or international reports on environmental racism or eco-justice. Finally, students can begin designing community-based solutions to local issues revealed by the data with which they interact. Students can practice communication and outreach skills by contacting organizations and community stakeholders, thereby gaining assistance in their efforts. The teacher's role now shifts to guiding the learning and research process, providing resources, asking questions, and helping to edit student's communication for clarity. The best part is students can sharpen a whole host of content knowledge and skills while meaningfully contributing to their communities.

Educators should identify ways in which this placed-based notion of contributing to climate change and sustainability can become school-community-based initiatives. Schools and communities ought to partner with local businesses/industries/ NGOs, social service agencies, and/or partner schools internationally to identify ways in which the local communities can work towards climate change solutions. Transformative action research projects should be developed so that schools and communities share their initiatives and accomplishments. Such school-private climate governance initiatives would ensure students and communities become active agents in the process of transformation [29]. Ideally, such an educational orientation would facilitate the emergence of youth-led community organizing, a movement to empower youth while enabling them to make substantive contributions to their communities [87–89]. Educational experiences ought to be intergenerational,

#### *The Goals of Science Education Should Be Linked to the Central Tenets of Sustainable… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114114*

community-based, oriented towards self- and social empowerment, and transformative [29, 78]. Youth have a significant role in contributing to the social and environmental changes that must transpire. The overarching goal of environmental education is to educate citizens who can address environmental issues facing humanity that are yet unforeseen and bring about social transformation. Such an orientation to teaching and learning should enhance the scientific and citizenship skills amongst learners, as well as critical political literacy with respect to local and global inequalities [29].

There is no shortage of issues students may choose to address. Students are constantly surrounded by sustainability-related phenomena, although they sometimes need to be primed to notice how they are related to science and sustainability. Sustainability issues in their community can include low biodiversity around their homes, food insecurity, high prevalence of a debilitating health condition, or plastic waste in the vicinity of their local community. If you simply ask students how their community could be improved, then they will have a plethora of ideas; the educator's role is to facilitate fitting their ideas into the grand scheme of community development/enhancement. Finally, and most powerfully, educators can work to support students in designing and implementing a solution to the issues identified. This crucial step makes the difference between fostering awareness and preparing students to reimagine and reconstruct the world around them. Solutions can start small; nevertheless, they may require the participation of various stakeholders and community associations. Bringing these individuals and institutions together results in strengthened community partnerships, emboldened students, and long-lasting relationships toward community revitalization. While students may not remember every lesson throughout their educational journey, the emotional impressions and skills gained through their place-based action-oriented projects will leave a lasting legacy [73].
