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Is water always in balance? A work activity for the education of the sustainable consumption from creativity and body expression. (Poster)
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- 1. CONSUMER EDUCATION, A WAY TO TACKLE THE EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY
- 2. DIDACTIC GUIDELINES FOR CONSUMER EDUCATION
- 3. ONE EXAMPLE: WORKSHOP “IS WATER ALWAYS ON BALANCE”
- Activity 1: How much are you willing to pay for water
- Activity 2: How do we relate to water
- Activity 3: Is water always on balance
- Activity 4: Are all waters the same
- 4. FINAL THOUGHTS
- 4. REFERENCES
Is water always in balance? A work activity for the education of the sustainable consumption from creativity and body expression. (Poster)Josep Bonil, Genina Calafell, Marta Fonolleda, Maia Querol, Salvador VicianaJosep Bonil. Departament de Didàctica de les Ciències Experimentals. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Edifici G-5. 08193 Bellaterra. (Barcelona) (0034)935813356. josep.bonil@uab.cat Genina Calafell. Escola del Consum de Catalunya. Agència Catalana del Consum. Gran Via de Carles III, 105. 08028. Barcelona. (0034) 935516561. gcalafell@gencat.cat Marta Fonolleda. Escola del Consum de Catalunya. Agència Catalana del Consum. Gran Via de Carles III, 105. 08028. Barcelona. (0034) 935516569. mfonolleda@gencat.cat Maia Querol. Escola del Consum de Catalunya. Agència Catalana del Consum. Gran Via de Carles III, 105. 08028. Barcelona. (0034) 935516562. mquerolp@gencat.cat Salvador Viciana. Escola del Consum de Catalunya. Agència Catalana del Consum. Gran Via de Carles III, 105. 08028. Barcelona. (0034) 935516566. saviciana@gencat.cat In this communication it is presented a workshop about water consumption whose starting question is: “Is water always on balance?”. In this workshop, the concept of sustainability is worked drawing an analogy with body balance. TPR activities are used to allow the students to represent sustainability. Looking for the body balance helps to identify the diversity of factors that have an influence on the research of a sustainable lifestyle as well. Sustainability ends up being the result of a random balance between nature and culture. 1. CONSUMER EDUCATION, A WAY TO TACKLE THE EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY It is 7:00 in the morning and the ring of the alarm clock tells me that a new day is starting. I have a shower, get dressed and have a quick coffee on my way to work. Every day a lot of us repeat the same actions in a systematic way. If we freeze the actions at intervals of ten minutes… could we look for how many plugs are switched on in our homes? How many taps are turned on and off? How many coffee machines make coffee nonstop? From another perspective we could ask ourselves: how many kilowatts do we consume? how many liters of water run through taps?, how much raw material to produce electrical appliances do we use in the morning?. Every act of consumption evidences the use and transformation of natural resources. Consumption becomes a way of relationship between individuals and natural environment. With this relation many problems can be associated, such as the increase of waste materials, the increase of the ecological footprint, and global warming among others, (Gardner, Assadourian & Sarin 2004). That’s how sustainability appears as an essential element in the approach of consumer education (UNEP, Marrakech Task Force on Education for Sustainable Consumption 2008) and the consumers as a key factor when building a model of society that is able to move towards sustainability. The consumer education brings an opportunity to make citizenship capable of participating in the construction of the future from an open and creative position. We need, then, an education that focuses on change and gives citizenship tools for imagining new situations and building plausible as well as divergent alternatives (Mayer 2002). This communication presents a didactic reflection about the relevance of creativity in didactic activities linked to consumer education. Later on, it will be exemplified the presence of creativity in teaching practice through the presentation of a workshop that has, as the main topic, water consumption. 2. DIDACTIC GUIDELINES FOR CONSUMER EDUCATION Consumption shows us the speed in which our society is changing: changes in the kinds of products, in the ways of using them, in legal regulations, and even in values (Pujol 1996). Summarizing, consumption makes us be aware of the vertiginous changes in western society’s lifestyles. Given that, consumer education can give tools to individuals to build strategies in order to face these changes. Then, appears the challenge to define a consumer education capable of take action in the present considering the future. It’s needed a consumer education that working with nowadays phenomena will provide students with tools to face current unknown situations. From that point of view, creativity has a fundamental role (Calafell, Fonolleda & Querol 2008). As consumption reaches us through all our senses and from diversity of languages, then, consumer education can be a platform to boost the presence of new proposals moving between rigor and imagination. The rigor allows us to know and use the rules and techniques that define each language. The imagination enables us to obtain the fullest capacity of the resources we dispose of and make divergent proposals that allow us to put forward new solutions to new challenges. Assuming creativity as the axis of consumer education implies that team teachers should take some risks. Before consumption you can not be conservative: dynamism becomes a fundamental feature. That’s why a didactic proposal must move in between stability and change. Stability reinforces the centre’s educational project and change enables to adapt it to new products and services, new languages and new ways of management. Summarizing, dynamism enables citizenship to adapt to the changes that surprises us day after day in consumer society. Creativity has to help students to design their own strategies, which must be changeable and adaptable to new situations. In consumption, the rigid planification is often exceeded by unexpected situations that requires us to change constantly our way of thinking and acting (Bonil et al. 2004). It is then important to dialogue between determinism and uncertainty. Determinism allows us to identify the elements which guide our acts of consumption. Aspects such as the framework of the law, the products and services that provide each establishment or the basic coexistence rules that arise from the personal relationships surrounding consumption. Uncertainty helps us to place ourselves before surprise, before the appearance of new consumption goods, new communicative codes or new ways of payment. The presence of creativity enables us to move towards a consumer education that bets on dialogue among points of view, and therefore escapes from reductionism. A consumer education that sees the classroom as a space open to the diversity of points of view, and therefore is not focused on qualifying people attitudes as correct or incorrect. A consumer education must be able to discover the complexity that is hidden behind every act of consumption, and therefore need to enhance the reflection and escape from closed instructions. 3. ONE EXAMPLE: WORKSHOP “IS WATER ALWAYS ON BALANCE?” Next we present a workshop about water consumption designed including the principles mentioned above. The workshop is offered from l’Escola del Consum de Catalunya9, (Consumption Education of Catalonia), a public institution whose goal is to boost the presence of consumer education in the catalan educational context. The workshop that is presented starts with the question: is water always on balance?, and it is intended for young people between 12-16 years old. With the realization of this workshop we go after the students to achieve the following competences: Being aware of the biological and social function of water, in order to consider it as a natural resource essential for people and environment. Identifying sustainability as a balance between people’s needs and environment, in order to be able to define a sustainable and responsible model of water consumption. Knowing some of the indicators that allow us to value if a sustainable water consumption is being made, in order to be able to introduce criteria of sustainability in everyday water consumption. The proposal is organized in a series of four activities arranged from a constructivist perspective (Jorba, Sanmartí 1996). Activity 1: How much are you willing to pay for water? In this activity we explore the elements which determine the price of water, with an emphasis on the importance of the context and the diversity of typologies of water offered in the market. At the beginning, we show different situations to the students (a day on the beach, buying water at the supermarket, drinking a glass of water at home…). The students consider how much they would be willing to pay for a liter of water in every situation. In the discussion arise that the price every person is willing to pay depends on multiple elements. Activity 2: How do we relate to water? Next we discover how the consumption of water evidences a relationship with the environment. Therefore, sustainability is considered as a dynamic balance between two reference points: environment and people. To represent this concept, we ask the students to experiment different ways of balance with their own bodies (Fig.1). 
Fig:1: Examples of different positions Next, we analyze the balance in the different positions, taking as references the points of support and the body alignment. Some balances are more stable than others, due to their capacity of maintaining the position and the capacity of adaptation to fluctuations in environment. In this activity we introduce body language as a way of representing sustainability. The reflection about the own body balance allows us to introduce in a significant way elements such as stability in time or resistance to the changes in the environment as a way of approaching to the concept of sustainability. Activity 3: Is water always on balance? The aim of this activity is giving the students the indicators to assess the sustainability of their everyday management of water. To do so, we simulate a purchase of water. We assign the characteristics of the purchase of every group of students, using roulettes, dice and cards (Fig.2). Every purchase differs in the origin of the water, the place of consumption, the use that will be made, the quantity that will be used, whether it is tap or bottled water and, in the latter case, the kind of container. Making the presence of chance significant in the process of the purchase. 
Fig 2: Sample of chance elements that help form how the purchase will be made. Once we have determined the characteristics of every purchase, every group assesses the degree of sustainability of their water taking into consideration the following parameters: relation among origin place and destination, quantity and use, quality and use, and the kind of container. Sustainability appears as a relative value with a high component of chance. It stops being a universal and absolute concept; we must take into account the context and the individual option. Activity 4: Are all waters the same? The aim of the last activity of the sequence is to make students think about the possibility of producing their own strategy before the consumption of water. To do so, every group tests the sustainability of their assigned water in the previous activity by an exercise of balances adapted from the game commercialized with the name of Twister ©. In this game every group experiments the sustainability of their water from the positions they realize with their bodies and the strategy they face the game. (Fig.3) F  ig. 3: Example of body representation of different types of consumption of water.
The body and the changes it undergoes according to chance becomes a tool to think about the sustainability from an open position, where the same options and the presence of chance are relevant. 4. FINAL THOUGHTS The main focus of consumer education is on the students. The persons who, with their actions, create their own model of consumption from their knowledge, their values, skills, and the possibilities they get from the same resources and the environment. This way, the consumer education becomes a platform to help every person decide their own way of behaving from a thoughtful and responsible position. The exercise of building the same model of consumer has a high creative component part. If we expect every person to be able to position before the phenomenon of consumption in a different way, creativity and strategy turn into first-rate educational tools. Giving presence to these elements in consumer education means choosing open educational approaches, which facilitate debate, the acceptance of diversity, the presence of chance and the questioning of the world. Where the presence of change as one of the fundamental features of our world is obvious and one of the abilities that we, the individual, have to develop. 4. REFERENCES Bonil, J., Sanmartí, N., Tomàs, C. & Pujol, R.M. 2004, "Un nuevo marco para orientar las respuestas a las dinámicas: el paradigma de la complejidad", Investigación en la Escuela, , pp. 5-19. Calafell, G., Fonolleda, M. & Querol, M. 2008, "Propuestas para llegar al currículo", Cuadernos de Pedagogía, vol. 383, pp. 52-55. Gardner, G., Assadourian, E. & Sarin, R. 2004, "L'estat del consum avui" in L'estat del món 2004: la societat de consum Worldwatch Institute, Barcelona. Jorba, J. & Sanmartí, N. 1996, Enseñar, aprender y evaluar: un proceso de regulación contínua, MEC, Madrid. Mayer, M. 2002, "Ciutadans del barri i del planeta" in Cinc ciutadanies per a una nova educació, 1a edn, Graó, Barcelona. Pujol, R.M. 1996, Educación y consumo. La formación del consumidor en la escuela, Horsori, Barcelona. UNEP & Marrakech Task Force on Education for Sustainable Consumption 2008, "Here and Now: Education for Sustainable Consumption", .
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