Getting a different doughnut into school
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth is arguably the most important Economics text of the early 21st Century addressing as it does climate issues and social change as well as economic growth. Carolina Escobar-Tello invites schools to find out more and join the Doughnut community!
DEAL
At Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) we are passionate about the challenge of how best to bring the ideas of Doughnut Economics and the importance of the circular economy to centres of education. Our mission is to inspire and empower people from all walks of life to engage in shaping their world differently during an era of massive social and ecological change.
What is Doughnut Economics?
Doughnut Economics is a book by Kate Raworth (2017) offering “seven ways to think like a 21st century economist”. One way to think about the book is that if the Doughnut, a proposed goal for economies that is ‘to meet the needs of all within the means of the living planet’, is the destination, Doughnut Economics gives us some conceptual approaches to help us get there. An alternative approach to economics therefore provides the conceptual and practical tools to help us achieve some of the world’s most pressing needs.
DEAL is now collaborating with a wide range of organisations, governments, councils and activists worldwide to turn the idea of Doughnut Economics (DE) into action.
Schools and Education initiative.
DEAL has also been reaching out to schools, colleges and universities to deeply understand their needs, challenges and opportunities when they wish to teach and/or develop their curriculum to address the idea of regenerative and distributive economies. We believe the idea of the doughnut can help.
This has brought us closer to a community of teachers, learners and education managers around the world in both rural and urban education settings. We have learned a great deal both from well-established schools and groups leading new initiatives, private and public. We have learned from a wide range of people with different objectives working in a variety of related fields with people who are part of the sector in different capacities.
As a result, we now understand a lot more about how we can contribute towards the pressing need to update curricula and pedagogy so that the urgent issues of climate change, social equity and justice, can be easily embedded into their backbone. We’ve also learned a great deal about how 21st century education is evolving and that different resources are now needed to support the new ways in which students need to learn; with multi-directional relationships and dynamics where learners and teachers often swap roles, where content is not flattened and instead is ongoing and alive.
Inter-generational
Some of the most interesting groups we work with are inter-generational, where young and old come together to rethink what they should be learning in order to shape prosperous futures while living within ecological boundaries with no one left behind.
Bringing the Doughnut into classrooms
Having conducted our research, we have now produced a variety of different learning resources: Hello Doughnut!, Preparing to teach, and Dimensions of the Doughnut are the first set of foundational tools launched in September 2024 for teachers and learners to make the Doughnut part of their practice. Hello Doughnut! is a set of resources for different age groups in primary and secondary schools which explain the concept of the Doughnut in an age-appropriate way and inviting learners to become involved with the concept using the head (your thinking), heart (your feelings), hands (doing and making) and feet (being and taking action in your own area).
We understand that this can mean something different in different parts of the world and with this this in mind, we have also designed the Preparing to teach tool.
This tool aims to support and equip teachers who feel ready to facilitate, lead and teach DE content with the knowledge and skills needed to promote student engagement with key Doughnut ideas. And finally, the Dimensions of the Doughnut tool is a series of slides that shows in some depth how the Doughnut model is broken down and applied, illustrated by images of Doughnut-based initiatives happening all over the world.
We have designed each tool with the ambition that they will be ‘ready to use’, yet flexible and adaptable for use in diverse cultures and educational systems. We have already received exciting feedback from our community about how schools are finding the inspiration and motivation to redesign their curriculums with Doughnut Economics at the heart. Teachers are making space and time to include new ideas and developing the use of vocabulary enabling students to talk about many of the difficult issues of modern life. Some are also rekindling their passion for teaching! Young people are creating their own learning groups to take action to ‘get into the Doughnut’, and learning groups are being created to support others in extraordinarily difficult settings like refugee camps.
Working with us
DEAL’s foundational education tools are just one step further in the work that we’re doing. We are designing further free tools and resources for change-makers that will help put the ideas of Doughnut Economics into practice.
Of course, using these resources are not the only way to address social and climate issues in your curriculum and to support the change that the world needs. But they are well researched, free and we are keen for you to try them! We would then love to share your innovations and learning with our communities so that these can, in turn, inspire like-minded changemakers.
We would be thrilled to hear from you and find out more about your needs or receive your feedback if you are already using our tools. We’d love to know the impact you are having and how we can improve the tools where needed. We’d particularly like to learn how you may have re-designed, adapted or modified them to suit your location, time constraints, etc.
Finally, we’d also like to get involved with your work. Perhaps you would like us to run an online session for you? Please get in touch, we are here to help, and, as always, to learn!
Together, we can add to the transformation of education for this century to the next.
Carolina leads DEAL’s Schools & Education initiative, co-creating ideas and resources with students, life-long learners, educators, curriculum designers and educational institutions.
DEAL aims to grow an influential and dynamic network of transformative educational practice that contributes to a global-wider movement of regenerative change.
Geert Groote School 2 in Amsterdam were introduced to their very first ‘Donut Day’.
FEATURE Image by Ave Calvar For Unsplash+
Support images kindly provided by DEAL.
