Co-Authored by Kacey Dewing, Gitanjali Paul, and Angela Whittaker
Imagine a class exploring pollution in a nearby river. The teacher partners with a local environmental nonprofit to host a cleanup event. Guided by the nonprofit’s naturalists, students arrive with waders, trash bags, and data sheets. They spend the afternoon collecting litter, observing their surroundings, and getting muddy. By the end of the day, they feel a sense of accomplishment. Their time outdoors strengthens their connection to the river and deepens their understanding of the problem and its effects on downstream communities. In that moment, they believe they are part of the solution.
The open question is what students believe about themselves after the trash bags are gone. Do they see themselves as capable of making a lasting impact? After the next storm, when trash washes into the river again, what will they think their afternoon accomplished? And could they address a different problem they care about without having a plan handed to them?
The Gap Between Awareness and Action
The NAAEE Guidelines for Excellence stress the importance of making sure that learners 1) understand the environmental problems facing their communities and 2) have the tools to take meaningful action. Most environmental education (EE) programs are designed with both of these elements in mind. Yet even our best programs may not close the gap between learning and actually implementing meaningful, learner-led action.
Too often, we teach young people what is wrong and then involve them in predetermined activities or ask them to choose an action from a limited set of options. The river cleanup is a good example: a worthwhile day, planned by adults. Single activities like this rarely lead to sustained learner agency. While outdoor activities and hands-on learning are valuable, they do not, by themselves, counteract the feeling of anxiety that comes with learning about environmental threats and climate change.
Solutionary teaching and learning aims to close this gap. Learners move from identifying problems to taking informed, meaningful action that addresses root and/or systemic causes while considering the effects of their solutions on people, animals, and the environment.
While outdoor activities and hands-on learning are valuable, they do not, by themselves, counteract the feeling of anxiety that comes with learning about environmental threats and climate change.
So how does it work? Here, we’ll walk through how the free Solutionary Framework and supplementary tools can help environmental educators foster hope, build learner agency, and teach lifelong problem-solving skills within their existing programs. Along the way, we’ll return to the river to show what that looks like in practice.
Every Child Deserves Hope
Young people are inundated with bad news about the environment. Knowledge about climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental issues is essential. However, it is unfair to ask learners to absorb the gravity of these problems without also supporting their well-being and sense of agency. Beyond knowledge, we want to engage them in relevant practices that help them balance hard truths with wonder, connection, and the possibility of meaningful change.
The Solutionary Lens introduces seven mindsets that learners can practice as habits of seeing and doing. Each is inherently hopeful because it begins with the understanding that problems have causes—and that those causes can be understood and addressed. With practice, the lens cultivates a positive disposition and a healthier foundation for learning about environmental threats and acting on them.
Consider the students at the river. They could leave believing the river is simply a place where trash ends up, and will end up again. Or they could leave curious about where the trash comes from. The first view makes the problem permanent. The second makes it solvable, and that shift in framing is what the Solutionary Lens is designed to build.
The Solutionary Lens does its most important work when paired with action. When high school students worldwide who had completed solutionary projects were surveyed, 93% agreed with the statement, “I have more confidence that I can take action to make a positive difference.” As Freddie, a seventh-grade solutionary student in Maine, explained, “It feels powerful because I never thought people my own age could figure out how to change things they think need to be changed.”
That is the shift we are seeking: learners who reach their own conclusion that hope is warranted rather than simply being told to feel hopeful.
Every Child Deserves Agency
Lasting agency—learners’ belief that they can identify a problem, choose a response, and follow through without a script—requires investigating problems deeply and pursuing innovative ways to address them.
Return to the river, but this time imagine the cleanup as the starting point rather than the conclusion. Educators encourage students to investigate the root and systemic causes of the pollution, eventually tracing it upstream to stormwater runoff from a nearby parking lot. Instead of providing instructions, the educators invite students to ask questions, learn deeply, and then propose solutions.
After researching and evaluating their options, students select two solutions: repaving the parking lot with permeable pavement and creating a rain garden to reduce runoff into the river. They divide into teams, and the nonprofit connects one team with City Hall and the other with an organization specializing in sustainable landscape design.
With their partners, the teams develop plans that include impact statements, budgets, and timelines. Near the end of the school year, both teams present their proposals to the appropriate municipal committees. The rain garden receives approval, while the permeable-pavement proposal is added to the agenda for the next committee meeting.
A river cleanup provides a valuable service to the community. A systemic, learner-led project can go further by creating a solution that endures after the students move on. Just as important, students develop and carry forward the confidence that comes from researching a problem, choosing a solution, and helping bring it to fruition.
In solutionary teaching and learning, students lead the investigation and planning. Schools and community partners provide the knowledge, skills, and connections to take deeper action.
A river cleanup provides a valuable service to the community. A systemic, learner-led project can go further by creating a solution that endures after the students move on. Just as important, students develop and carry forward the confidence that comes from researching a problem, choosing a solution, and helping bring it to fruition.
The next time they notice a problem, they will know how to begin developing their own plan. What makes that possible is not simply the memory of one successful project but the process behind it—a problem-solving methodology learners can use throughout their lives.
Every Child Deserves Lifelong Tools for Environmental Stewardship
Today’s kindergarteners will graduate into a world shaped by artificial intelligence, accelerating climate change, and challenges we cannot yet predict. They will need environmental knowledge and a reliable process for solving problems—one that helps them develop solutions that do the most good and the least harm for people, animals, and ecosystems.
The Solutionary Framework provides a step-by-step process learners can apply to any issue. It also includes an explicit ethical test: MOGO, which is short for “MOst GOod, least harm.” Learners apply MOGO to each proposed solution, weighing its effects on animals, people, and ecosystems. Where environmental frameworks often focus on species and ecosystems, MOGO also asks learners to consider individual animals and all affected people, making care for everyone, human and nonhuman, an explicit part of every decision.
When using the framework, learners begin by identifying a real-world problem. They then investigate its causes, generate possible solutions, assess those solutions using MOGO, and implement the most solutionary and most feasible option. The river students followed exactly this sequence. They identified trash in the river as the problem, investigated until they found the parking lot, generated options, weighed how each would affect residents, wildlife, and the watershed, and pursued the two strongest.
Systems thinking is another essential part of this toolkit. When learners trace problems to their root and systemic causes rather than treating them as isolated events, they gain a skill they can use throughout their lives. For example, sixth graders exploring food waste in their school might begin by examining the contents of a cafeteria trash bin. From there, they can investigate the issue by asking targeted questions:
- Why is so much food being discarded?
- Are the portion sizes too large?
- Are students served food they didn’t choose or don’t like?
- Do scheduling, purchasing practices, or school policies contribute to the problem?
As learners keep asking, the questions reach further upstream to investigate the root and/or systemic origins of the problem:
- Who in our community goes without enough food while this food is wasted?
- What percentage of legumes and grains is grown as feed crops rather than for direct human consumption?
- What land, water, and energy went into producing the food we throw away?
- How are the animals raised for the meat and dairy treated?
- What happens to discarded food after it leaves the school?
Each question helps learners uncover the systems influencing the outcome and guides them toward more sustainable solutions. The same approach can be applied to a littered trail, a crowded bird feeder, or a community garden: begin with what is visible, then keep asking “why” – until the systems behind the issue become clear.
A learner introduced to this process through a sixth-grade food-waste project or a trail-erosion investigation at summer camp can later apply it to a high school water-quality project, a transportation problem in their community, or an effort to improve workplace sustainability. The problems may change, but this useful process remains profoundly powerful throughout life.
When learners trace problems to their root and systemic causes rather than treating them as isolated events, they gain a skill they can use throughout their lives.
Where to Begin
Solutionary environmental education adds three interconnected elements to learning: evidence-based optimism grounded in experience, agency that outlasts a single activity, and a process learners can use again and again. Consider beginning with one or more of the following approaches.
Foster Hope: Teach Through the Solutionary Lens
Before learners study a problem, use the Solutionary Lens to frame it as something with causes that can be understood and addressed. Share examples of successful youth-led projects, examine case studies of positive change, and celebrate existing community assets. These practices can help students develop confidence in their ability to make a difference.
Resources: Maine Solutionaries Report, featuring examples of student projects, and the Overview of the Solutionary Framework video
Build Agency: Provide Guidance, Not Direct Instruction
In the river example, the decisive moment came when the educators stopped directing the students and asked what the students would propose. You may not be able to turn over every decision, but you can find places in your programming where learners have more voice in shaping the project and its outcomes.
During a single activity, learner-led action might result in a list of proposals that they take back to their school or community. Over a season or semester, this can develop into a project they carry through over time. Challenge yourself to let go of some control while creating the structures learners need to take thoughtful, ethical action.
Resource: Then & Now: How Solutionary Projects Impact Students
Share Transferable Tools: Teach a Repeatable Process
Use the steps of the Solutionary Framework or any of IHE’s free tools to engage learners in both knowledge-building and action.
This might be as simple as encouraging learners to investigate the “why” behind a problem, as in the cafeteria example. You can also introduce tools such as the Systems Iceberg, which helps learners move from a visible event to the patterns, structures, and assumptions beneath it; the leverage points guide, which helps identify where an intervention could shift an entire system; and the Solutionary Scale, which helps learners evaluate a proposed solution using the MOGO Principle.
Resources: The Solutionary Teaching Tools video playlist, featuring short student-friendly videos that explain how and why to use activities like the Systems Iceberg
What Learners Carry Forward
The students at the river began with trash bags and ended at a municipal committee meeting. Their rain garden will do its work long after they have moved on. What they take with them matters just as much: the knowledge that they can trace a problem to its source and do something about it.
Today’s young people deserve the hope, agency, and tools they need to create a more just, sustainable, and humane world in which people, animals, and the environment can flourish. Hope, agency, and practical tools reinforce one another. Learners who believe solutions are possible are more willing to try one. Learners who take action and see results begin to trust their own judgment. Learners equipped with a process for turning that judgment into action gain skills that outlast any single unit, program, or environmental issue.
Today’s young people deserve the hope, agency, and tools they need to create a more just, sustainable, and humane world in which people, animals, and the environment can flourish. Hope, agency, and practical tools reinforce one another. Learners who believe solutions are possible are more willing to try one.
Today’s young people deserve the hope, agency, and tools they need to create a more just, sustainable, and humane world in which people, animals, and the environment can flourish. Hope, agency, and practical tools reinforce one another. Learners who believe solutions are possible are more willing to try one. Learners who take action and see results begin to trust their own judgment. Learners equipped with a process for turning that judgment into action gain skills that outlast any single unit, program, or environmental issue.
At its best, solutionary environmental education does so much more than simply inform students about what is wrong with the world. It helps them feel empowered with the understanding that they can play a meaningful role in making it better—and gives them the tools to continue doing so, again and again, long after they leave the classroom or program.
Want to use the Solutionary Framework to facilitate projects that help students bridge the gap between environmental awareness and action? One of the best ways to get started is to take IHE’s online Solutionary Micro-credential Course! Over 7 weeks, you’ll practice using tools mentioned in this article, try tested strategies, and meet other educators excited to develop students into informed stewards of our beautiful planet.