A Community-Centred Educational Model for developing Social Resilience (ACES): Playfulness towards an inclusive, safe and resilient society
Funder
UKRI-ESRC GCRF
Total value of project
£1,371,787
Value to Coventry University
£676,650.40
Project team
Professor Sylvester Arnab, Professor Katherine Wimpenny, Richard Tomlins, Dr Luca Morini, Alex Masters, Jayne Beaufoy
Duration of project
01/02/20 - 31/01/23
Project overview
The ACES project, funded by the UKRI-ESRC under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), is building on the empathic and inclusive playful and gameful research and practice of Coventry University’s award-winning GameChangers initiative and its sister initiative – CreativeCulture in Malaysia.
In the ACES project, we are investigating the impact of transformative education through playful approaches and experiences towards developing social resilience, targeting young people in Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Aligning with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal on equitable, inclusive quality education, we are developing an innovative pedagogical model and its associated programme of playful, experiential, co-creative, and participatory activities. The ACES model aims to bridge formal and informal educational contexts and spaces towards an inclusive, safe, and resilient society.
Through the community-centred aspect of the approach, young people will be able to develop non-discipline specific capabilities that can sustain them as active life-long learners and contributors to their communities. Teachers and local community groups are engaged in the project to draw on local knowledge and experience, and to extend the co-creation and ownership of the educational process to the community. Project outcomes will be translated into policy and practice recommendations.
Project objectives
- Investigate the context of the three countries in terms of the educational model mapped against the target sustainable development goals (SDGs) related to wellbeing, poverty and gender equality.
- Co-develop, co-create and localise the playful ACES programme of activities with the project partners (with a focus on young people and school teachers) as the instruments to investigate an educational model that will enable social innovation in the community.
- Co-design and co-develop participatory studies, involving ways to onboard and engage the local, rural and indigenous communities in Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, targeting young people, school teachers and wider community residents.
- Facilitate, capture and evaluate the experience, learning outcomes and transferability of the ACES approach, including the social and educational value of the proposed educational practice, and its ability to connect and reconnect communities into civic participation, social action and innovation towards achieving social resilience.
- Consolidate the outcomes and findings, and the extent to which the educational model is replicable and scalable beyond the target communities.
