Disaster Resilience Education
As the 2013-2014 disaster season looms, it's timely to share some of the knowledge from the Educating the Educators project which I have been working on with Australian Red Cross. Disasters such as the recent NSW and Tasmanian bushfires, Black Saturday in Victoria, devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales, and a spate of tropical cyclones in Queensland have all highlighted the need for individuals and communities to be prepared for these events. Disaster resilience is the ability to anticipate, prevent or mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from the impact of hazards. Disaster Resilience Education (DRE) builds knowledge, skills and confidence to problem solve and take action before, during and after a disaster. This project is a government funded National Emergency Management Project, with the aim of developing teacher awareness and confidence in the teaching of disaster resilience education and thus develop disaster resilience within primary and secondary school students.
The project ran a nationwide video competition for secondary school students. The winner was 15 year old Nat Kelly from Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory.
The project ran a nationwide video competition for secondary school students. The winner was 15 year old Nat Kelly from Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory.
The project team were keen to incorporate input from children in the development of professional learning resources for teachers. We came up with an idea to have children produce 'things' that would be promoted to teachers to raise their awareness of the importance of disaster resilience education. We wanted to provide support to a school to engage in disaster resilience education and in return have some student-created resources to share. As in all good projects what we thought we might get in the beginning and what we've actually come up with are quite different but no less valuable. What we have is an amazing case study of how Inquiry Based Learning can achieve deep learning and embedding of disaster resilience messages. The children involved can now freely articulate the PPRR (Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery) model of disaster resilience, and they have shared their learning with their families and wider community, helping to further raise awareness and promote the conversations that are important for everyone.
The video documenting this case study will be available here soon.
The video documenting this case study will be available here soon.
Disaster Resilience Education website
I created this site to share resources for the Educating the Educators Disaster Resilience Education Project.
