Co-Creation and Participatory Research: Climate Assemblies in Schools as a Means to Sustainability Transitions

To promote new ways of life and sustainable social practices, people and communities must be able to engage in community learning and sustainability research processes that promote environmental awareness and action, as well as the acquisition of new sustainability knowledge and competencies. This contribution presents school climate assemblies, conceived as a co-creation and participatory sustainability research practical approach. School climate assemblies are innovative democratic processes to learn, deliberate, make decisions, and seek solutions for change climate and local and regional sustainability. Thus, climate assemblies are understood as a new form of participatory sustainability research that can contribute to the co-creation of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies within educational communities and the development of sustainability competencies amongst students, and in turn influence policy making, through identifying actions, priorities and indicators for which community learning and action can make a real contribution to climate change and sustainability. This chapter presents a practical participatory sustainability research approach, school climate assemblies designed and implemented within the EDUCLIMAD project, where the theoretical and methodological conceptualisation and groundings are outlined, including the key elements, main phases and outcomes in the co-creation of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and transformative and community learning towards sustainability.