A Community-A Community-Centred Educational Model for developing Social Resilience (ACES): Playfulness towards an inclusive, safe and resilient society

The ACES project aims to investigate transformative education towards developing social resilience through the lens and practices of playful pedagogy and frugal methodology. The project constitutes a multifaceted, innovative pedagogical model combining an experiential pedagogical approach, a novel programme of activities (including the ‘lab’ methodology as a pedagogic tool), and the rigorous associated research and evaluation protocol for capturing impact. The consortium will specifically study the impact of such an experiential and participatory pedagogical model on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The ACES project responds to OECD (2018)’s emphasis that the future of education and skills in 2030 should address the transformative need for young people to be innovative, creative, responsible and aware towards innovative economies that are more productive, resilient and adaptable. The ACES model is thus experiential based on participatory and playful practices that promote inclusive, collaborative, active and co-creative 21st-century pedagogies. The educational process focuses on active dialogue and inquiry-based approaches that bring the community into the learning process and vice versa. Collaborative exploration, through the lens of play and playfulness, opens up opportunities for meaningful and agentic participation in creative and innovative practices in the community. The mechanics of play frame the creative inquiry process for developing social resilience and innovation through experimentation, divergent thinking and productive failure, where we iteratively and incrementally construct, test, adapt and evolve our response to challenges and opportunities. Through such an experiential approach, young people’s resilience can be encouraged and developed as resilience relies on mental processes and behaviours in coping with challenges, how well the constructed strategies work, and how well those strategies are viewed as requiring adaptation. With ACES, young people will develop capabilities that are not discipline-specific but will sustain them as active and life-long learners and contributors to their own community and those around them. The pedagogical model will further evolve iteratively and incrementally throughout the project as we feed in action research findings.

The ACES project aims to investigate transformative education towards developing social resilience in young people in primary and secondary education through the lens and practices of playful learning. The project constitutes a multifaceted, innovative pedagogical model that combines an experiential and participatory pedagogical approach, a novel programme of activities for supporting the learning process, and the rigorous associated research and evaluation protocol for capturing impact. The consortium will specifically study the impact of the pedagogical model on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia. Through the ACES’ programme of activities, young people will develop capabilities that are not discipline-specific but will sustain them as active and life-long learners and contributors to their own community and those around them. Teachers and local community groups will be engaged as it is crucial to draw on local knowledge and experience, and extend the co-creation and ownership of the educational process to the teachers, and to the community beyond the school itself. The project will translate the research findings into practice and policy insights and recommendations.