GEOVACUI-2: Citizen Science for knowledge depopulation

This Story Map has been designed following a didactic unit approach to be reproduced by teachers in their classrooms. It addresses the phenomenon of depopulation through the  GEOVACUI project . It contains the following information:

• Lesson plan. Objectives, topics and different didactic strategies.
• Frameworks. Students must acquire these skills throughout their training process. For this reason, teachers should consider the following frameworks: on the one hand, the key competencies of the  Council of the European Union  (2019), and, on the other hand, the competencies in sustainability in the framework of the Agenda 2030 proposed by UNESCO.
• Resources for Secondary School students and teachers made by experts on Geography, Geodata and Cartography in the team of GEOVACUI.
• Classroom examples tested by Spanish Secondary Schools with different approaches and several didactic strategies to implement in the Geography classroom.
• List of documents and documentaries is provided in order to use in the classroom.

We intend to bring teachers, students and the general public to an understanding of the content that can be easily adapted to the work in the classroom. In addition, the idea is that students can participate in a  Citizen Science  project. This didactic unit is built with the contribution of all researchers and participants in the GEOVACUI project, especially the  teachers who have collaborated  in the workshops during the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 academic years. Together they have collaborated to make GEOVACUI useful to science and society.

Objectives, topics and different didactic strategies

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Understand and acquire geographic knowledge related to the phenomena of the depopulation.   
2. Understand what citizen science is and its utility.
3. Investigate with scientific data contrasting with different geographical sources.
4. Acquire awareness about the challenges of the rural environment and its inhabitants.
5. Respect the proposals of all participants in order to acquire citizenship awareness.  
6. Learn to work cooperatively developing communication skills.

TOPICS Depopulation is a demographic and territorial phenomenon, which consists of a decrease in the number of inhabitants of a territory or nucleus in relation to a given period. Its causes and consequences are numerous and are related to different aspects addressed in the secondary education subjects: 1- Geography of population 2- Geography of economic activities 3- Economic imbalances 4- Territorial & environmental challenges

Competencies/Skill for a lifelong learning

The approach of the curricula by competencies has its origin in the project DeSeCo (Definition and Selection of Competencies: Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations) implemented by OECD in 1999.

Why is this approach important in the 21 ^st  century? The aim is to avoid the inequalities in the population, with the need to be learning permanently and acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes that allow students to achieve a better social and economic position and responsible ethics education with its environment.

This allows us underline the need of our students develop competencies related to science. For this reason, from this project we would like to get: a)  Scientific literacy, linking Geographical Science with the training process of our Secondary School students, offering them the best knowledge and tools from the experts (GEOVACUI team). b) Critical thinking, doubting categorical affirmations and obtaining a better knowledge by contrasting information. In fact, this competence/ability is related with the achievement indicator of “competencies in sustainability”: systemic thinking, collaborative decision making and responsibility toward present and future generations.

The citizen science method is when the public participates voluntarily in the scientific process, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, and interpreting results.

This activity should consolidate a series of  basic concepts , such as: depopulation, natural growth, population density, census, concentrated population distribution, population change...

Real classroom activities