TAKING ACTION FOR INSECTS

However, insects are in a worldwide decline, which endangers ecosystems and directly affects our future lives. This decline results from human actions leading to landscape changes (urbanization; intensive agriculture), pesticide use and climate change. If human actions are crucial for the decline, it needs a transformation of human actions to reverse this trend.This decline results from human actions leading to landscape changes (urbanization; intensive agriculture), pesticide use and climate change. If human actions are crucial for the decline, it needs a transformation of human actions to reverse this trend.

Action is the key:

We do not only need to be aware of the problem, we need to take action

Making citizens more competent to take action for insects – that is our aim in the educational design research project “Developing Action Competence for Insect Preservation” (DACIP) at Karlstad University (KAU). The research project consists of four interrelated elements:

• Developing a novel theoretical framework - Action Competence for Insect Preservation (ACIP).
• Providing novel quantitative and qualitative research instruments to investigate citizens' ACIP.  
• Designing innovative teaching approaches to raise citizens’ ACIP.
• Implementing these interventions at compulsory schools in Sweden and assessing changes in students’ ACIP in a pre-post-design using the developed research instruments.

Connecting research & teaching:

To achieve the aim of engaging young citizens on a large scale, we will work with teachers and students in grade 7 from compulsory schools and provide theory based lesson plans, teaching materials and workshops to support teaching. The first cycle of teaching will start in spring 2022.

In a first step, students will learn about the importance of insects, the causes for insect decline and potential actions to preserve insects. In a second step, the students will apply this knowledge in two types of action:

1. engage as citizen scientists in the web-platform iNaturalist to observe and record the diversity of insects in their direct environment,
2. plan and take self-chosen personal actions to preserve insects in their daily lives. Taking these personal actions together will result in a common contribution to insect preservation. Most importantly, students learn about different personal action possibilities through direct experiences.

In summary, the DACIP research project provides three main benefits:

• The ACIP framework can serve as a foundation for the development of initiatives and educational programs on insect preservation.
• The new instruments enable investigating citizens' abilities in preserving insects: Consequently, it becomes possible to measure the effects of initiatives or teaching approaches on citizens’ competences. This can facilitate targeted improvements of initiatives and educational programs.
• The implementation of the teaching approach in compulsory schools provides the possibility to reach young citizens and their communities on a large scale.

Therefore, the project can contribute significantly to achieve global biodiversity and sustainability goals by making citizens’ more competent for taking actions for insects.