Title: „Education for Sustainable Development through multimedia texts and textures for people with intellectual disabilities“

In the face of climate change, global warming, biodiversity loss and multiple diverse direct and indirect environmental as well as social and economic effects of missing and failing sustainability, the implementation of sustainable development in all states worldwide, including Germany, is the core “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity” (UN, 2015, 1) in our generation and the ones to come. This already suggests that sustainability and sustainable development are only possible through and with the active engagement of as many as possible, if not all, world citizens. It is thus striking that people with intellectual disabilities, along with people with disabilities in general, are more or less overtly excluded from policy documents, societal communication and discourses, action and education about and for sustainable development.
 

The project investigates links between sustainable development and disability studies, focussing especially on sustainability for all as a means and a goal of inclusive education and inclusion of all as a means and a goal of sustainable education. This inclusive education for sustainability will focus especially on achieving environmental or climate (change) literacy in and through literary learning and education.

The main theoretical aims are:

to think about people with disabilities and sustainable development in the framework of political documents and societal expectations to identify their specific vulnerabilities and how resilience can be built in combining environmental justice with disability studies,

to trace sustainability in education in the form of different literacies, different iterations in general (e.g. Wolfgang Klafki) and specific (e.g. Georg Feuser) educational theories, German school curricula and frameworks (e.g. BNE), and studies depicting the current state of education for sustainable development (inter)nationally across different subjects – pointing out a revised learning goal with associated competences for an inclusive education for sustainable development,

to develop a framework for an inclusive education for sustainable development through carefully chosen fictional stories, assembled in multimedia and multimodal textures (Hoydis, Bartosch, Gurr 2023), and made accessible through holistic, embodied, and multisensory tasks suitable for all learners in inclusive and diverse learning groups.

Developed textures and tasks will be empirically investigated in a qualitative study involving teachers and learners.

Short biography

Katrin Klandt holds a Bachelor of Arts (2017) and a Master of Education (2020) both from the University of Cologne and with a focus on special needs education, especially German and English language teaching for people with intellectual as well as behavioural disabilities and in inclusive contexts. During her studies, she completed a teaching internship in Gulu, Uganda, in 2016 and a semester studying abroad at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, in 2019. She completed her teacher traineeship (Referendariat) in April 2022, having taught at a school for students with intellectual disabilities in Cologne.
Since October 2022, she is a doctoral researcher at a.r.t.e.s. and at the Research Hub for „Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities“ (MESH) at the University of Cologne. Her research focuses on the intersection of disability studies, especially concerning students with intellectual disabilities, with climate change literacy in consideration of disaster preparedness and literary as well as film studies.

Teaching

Summer Term 2023

BA-seminar: Climate Fiction in the Inclusive English Classroom (with Prof. Dr. Roman Bartosch) (English Seminar II, University of Cologne)

Talks, Workshops and Conferences

“Reclaiming Lost Plants: Embodied Learning with Poetry in The Inclusive Classroom”, panel talk for the international conference ‘Growing Futures: Vegetal Encounters in Contemporary Children’s and Young Adult Ecofiction‘, University of Cologne, April 27, 2024, https://anglistik2.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/3/conference-growing-futures/programme

„Was haben der Dodo und der T-Rex gemeinsam? – Wir schreiben Gedichte zu ausgestorbenen Tierarten“, workshop for students aged 9-12 within the KölnerKinderUni (together with Tanya Gautam), University of Cologne, March 01, 2024, https://kinderuni.uni-koeln.de/news/einzelansicht-koost/13-was-haben-der-dodo-und-der-t-rex-gemeinsam-wir-schreiben-gedichte-zu-ausgestorbenen-tierarten#news9692

„Across Nature and Culture: the city of Florence as a case study for natural-cultural conservation and preservation issues”, fully funded attendance of the EUniWell Summer School 2023, University of Florence, September 4 – 8, 2023,

https://www.euniwell.eu/what-we-offer/educational-offer/summer-winter-schools/euniwell-summer-school-across-nature-and-culture-the-city-of-florence-as-a-case-study-for-natural-cultural-conservation-and-preservation-issues

Contact:  katrin.klandtuni-koeln.de