Fostering Action Competence Through Emancipatory, School-Based Environmental Projects: A Bildung Perspective

Abstract

Although much research in environmental and sustainability education has focused on knowledge and awareness, fewer studies have examined how school-based projects can foster young learners’ capacity for action. This study investigates how emancipatory, school-based environmental projects can foster young learners’ foundational capacities for contributing to a more sustainable and caring future. Grounded in the Bildung perspective and the action competence framework, a 16-week intervention was implemented with Grade 8 students who collaboratively identified and addressed authentic environmental issues—such as waste mismanagement, sanitation concerns, and safety risks—within their school community. Using a concurrent mixed-methods design, quantitative data from the Student Action Competence Questionnaire were integrated with qualitative evidence from worksheets and reflective journals. Results show consistent improvement across all dimensions of action competence, particularly in democratic collaboration and students’ willingness to take shared responsibility for environmental well-being. Qualitative findings reveal the development of critical reflection, co-creation with school stakeholders, and a growing sense of social responsibility, as students engaged in activities ranging from redesigning waste systems to proposing improvements through official communication channels. Rather than focusing on large-scale environmental outcomes, the projects cultivated everyday practices of care, participation, and ethical awareness—key dispositions for inspiring long-term change toward a greener and more sustainable future. The study highlights how context-based, dialogic learning can empower students as emerging environmental citizens within their immediate communities.

1. Introduction

Amid increasingly complex environmental and social challenges, education is widely recognized as a key driver of transformative change that prepares learners to contribute to more sustainable futures (OECD, 2022; UNESCO, 2016). This expectation extends beyond the acquisition of environmental knowledge to include the cultivation of collective responsibility, ethical awareness, and meaningful participation in community-based improvement (Hopkins, 2015; OECD, 2022). Global frameworks such as UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development agenda also emphasize enabling young people to engage with authentic socio-ecological issues and to develop the competencies needed to act toward sustainability (Hopkins, 2015; UNESCO, 2020).

Action competence, as conceptualized by Jensen and Schnack (1997), represents a key learning outcome in environmental and sustainability education. It emphasizes students’ capacity to make informed decisions and take intentional, value-based action on environmental issues. Although widely acknowledged as an essential educational aim, research shows that school practices often fall short of cultivating this form of agency, tending instead to focus on awareness raising or individual lifestyle adjustments while offering limited opportunities for democratic decision-making and collaborative problem-solving (Ardoin et al., 2020; Kyburz-Graber, 2019; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). As a result, learners frequently lack structured experiences that connect reflection, shared analysis, and collective action in ways that meaningfully support the development of action competence.

Bildung provides a complementary lens by framing education as a process of self-formation grounded in critical reflection, autonomy, and responsible action within society (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010; Sjöström et al., 2017). Recent scholarship conceptualizes Bildung and competence as mutually reinforcing “twin” dimensions (Carlsson, 2024), suggesting that transformative environmental learning requires both the capacity to act and a deeper understanding of why such action matters.

However, empirical work exploring how lower-secondary students develop these intertwined capacities in everyday school settings remains limited. Many school-based environmental activities continue to operate in top-down ways that restrict students’ agency and reduce participation to symbolic tasks (Jaikrasen & Ketsing, 2025; Cincera & Kovacikova, 2014; Wals et al., 2008). To move beyond such compliance-oriented practices, Kyburz-Graber (2019) argues for approaches that cultivate emancipatory and reflective engagement within learners’ communities. In this study, “emancipatory” refers to enabling learners to recognize and challenge structural constraints, act autonomously, and co-create change through democratic participation.

Therefore, the present study examines how an emancipatory, school-based environmental project fosters students’ action competence through the Bildung dimensions of critical reflection, co-creation with stakeholders, and social responsibility. By engaging with local, everyday issues—such as waste, sanitation, and safety—the study investigates how students identify and analyze environmental problems, collaborate with relevant school personnel, and demonstrate increasingly reflective, democratic, and responsible forms of environmental action.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Action Competence: From Knowledge to Participation

Over the past two decades, the concept of action competence has become central to environmental and sustainability education as a way to move beyond knowledge transmission and toward transformative participation (Jensen & Schnack, 1997; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). It focuses on enabling learners to identify and critically analyze environmental issues, envision alternatives, and take intentional, value-based actions.

Despite its theoretical appeal, research indicates that school-based programs often interpret “action” narrowly, emphasizing individual behavior modification instead of collective, community-oriented engagement (Ardoin et al., 2020; Kyburz-Graber, 2019). This reductionist tendency results in symbolic activities that fail to develop students’ sense of agency or sustained commitment to change.

Scholars emphasize that critical reflection, collaboration, and shared responsibility form the core dimensions of action competence (Emmons, 1997; Jensen & Schnack, 1997; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). These dimensions require learning environments that foster students’ ability to question assumptions, make informed decisions, and act in socially responsible ways. Action competence thus represents both a goal and a process—developing the capacity for reflective and meaningful participation in addressing environmental issues.

2.2. Bildung as a Theoretical Foundation

The concept of Bildung, rooted in the German humanistic tradition, provides a philosophical and theoretical foundation for understanding how action competence can be cultivated. Bildung emphasizes education as a lifelong process of self-formation, where learners engage in critical reflection, make autonomous decisions, and act ethically in relation to their social and ecological worlds (Carlsson, 2024; Sjöström et al., 2017).

In this study, Bildung is used to interpret three interrelated dimensions of students’ learning:

(1)

Critical reflection, which focuses on students’ ability to question causes, connect multiple factors, and reconsider their role in solving problems;

(2)

Co-creation with stakeholders, which highlights the democratic process of planning, negotiating, and refining solutions with peers, teachers, and local actors; and

(3)

Social responsibility, which emphasizes that students see their actions as meaningful contributions to the community beyond themselves.

Through this lens, these dimensions are viewed as interconnected expressions of reflexive agency—the capacity to think, act, and re-evaluate one’s actions in relation to broader social and ecological contexts (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010; Sjöström et al., 2017).

2.3. Emancipatory Approach in Environmental Education

The emancipatory approach provides the pedagogical grounding for designing and implementing school-based environmental projects. Rooted in Freire’s (1970/2000) concept of education for liberation and expanded within environmental education by Wals and Jickling (2002), this approach emphasizes dialogue, critical awareness, and collaborative action as means of developing learners’ capacity for transformation. In contrast to instrumental models that predefine behavioral outcomes, emancipatory learning values open-ended, participatory processes where students and educators co-determine goals, share responsibilities, and learn through reflection and action (Wals et al., 2008).

Within this study, the emancipatory approach was operationalized through three key principles:

(1)

Dialogic learning, in which students, teachers, and stakeholders engaged in mutual dialogue to identify and analyze environmental issues;

(2)

Shared decision-making, which emphasized students’ autonomy and collaboration with others to plan and implement actions; and

(3)

Collective reflection and responsibility, encouraging learners to evaluate outcomes, recognize interdependence, and sustain improvements through democratic participation (Cincera et al., 2020; Schusler & Krasny, 2010).

These principles fostered a classroom culture where students acted as agents of change rather than passive recipients of environmental knowledge. Consistent with Bildung and action competence, the emancipatory approach supports reflective thinking, collaboration, and ownership of learning, empowering students to connect knowledge with ethical and civic responsibility. It therefore provided the pedagogical foundation through which the school-based environmental projects in this study were designed and enacted.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Research Design

This study adopted a concurrent mixed methods design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) to obtain a holistic understanding of how students developed action competence through emancipatory, school-based environmental projects. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously throughout the 16-week intervention, each addressing complementary aspects of students’ learning and engagement. The quantitative data from the Student Action Competence Questionnaire provided indicators of students’ levels and progression, while the qualitative data from worksheets and reflective journals illuminated how they reflected, collaborated, and acted within the project context. Integrating both strands of evidence enabled a comprehensive interpretation of students’ transformation in line with the Bildung framework and the principles of the emancipatory approach.

3.2. Research Site and Context

The study was conducted at a public secondary school in Bangkok, Thailand, serving approximately 2000 students from Grades 7–12. The research focused on Grade 8 students (aged 13–14) enrolled in the Independent Study (IS) course during the second semester of the 2023 academic year. The IS course, a mandatory component of the curriculum, allows students to independently explore topics of personal interest and apply their learning for the benefit of their community. However, in typical practice, IS projects at the school have not taken an emancipatory form; they are usually predetermined by teachers and are rarely related to environmental issues.

The school is located in an urban area surrounded by diverse neighborhoods, including residential zones, apartment complexes, and low-income housing. Due to safety concerns and parental consent requirements, the research was confined to activities within the school grounds. Environmental issues studied were therefore limited to those observed on campus, and the “community” was defined as the school community itself. Stakeholders included students, teachers, staff, administrators, and other school personnel. These conditions framed the focus on school-based environmental projects, where students collaborated to identify and address issues relevant to their immediate environment.

3.3. Participants and Ethical Considerations

Thirty-seven Grade 8 students (17 males and 20 females) from the Mathematics–Science track participated voluntarily. Both students and parents provided informed consent after receiving full information on the study’s purpose, procedures, potential risks, and benefits. Although students had prior experience with science projects, they had never participated in environmental projects or collaborated beyond their classroom groups.

Ethical standards were strictly followed, based on the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Participation was voluntary, and students could withdraw at any time without academic penalty. To protect privacy, pseudonyms and codes were used in all records. Within this ethical and contextual framework, the study proceeded to examine how school-based environmental projects fostered students’ development of action competence.

3.4. Summary of the Intervention—Emancipatory Approach

The 16-week school-based environmental project was implemented using an emancipatory approach and interpreted through the Bildung framework. Instead of directing students toward a single predetermined project, the IS course structure enabled student groups to select and investigate diverse environmental issues of personal and collective interest. The intervention emphasized democratic and reflective learning processes that nurtured students’ autonomy, collaboration, and sense of social responsibility. Through dialogic learning, shared decision-making, and collective reflection, students connected classroom learning with multiple forms of real-world environmental action within their school community.

Table 1. Alignment of the 16-week project activities with the emancipatory approach and Bildung framework.

Weeks	Main Learning Activities	Principles of the Emancipatory Approach	Corresponding Bildung Dimensions	Illustrative Examples/ Learning Outcomes
1–2 Problem survey and awareness building	Students conducted site walks, observed environmental issues, and interviewed school stakeholders.	Dialogic learning—students and teachers engaged in open dialogue to explore authentic school problems and share initial perspectives.	Critical reflection—questioning assumptions and recognizing causes of school-based environmental problems.	Students identified issues such as waste accumulation and drainage problems through sensory exploration and stakeholder interviews.
3–4 Issue selection and cause analysis	Group discussion and collaborative problem analysis to choose the most relevant issue for action.	Shared decision-making—students democratically negotiated priorities and selected feasible topics for collective action.	Critical reflection—Co-creation—linking multiple causes and connecting them to social and physical contexts.	Students analyzed root causes such as improper waste habits, poor drainage, and unsafe infrastructure.
5–7 Solution design and planning	Students worked with stakeholders to co-design practical solutions and detailed action plans.	Shared decision-making—students exercised autonomy while negotiating resources and responsibilities with stakeholders.	Co-creation with stakeholders—collaborative planning and revising plans based on feedback.	Students planned actions like a bottle-recycling system, canal cleaning with district support, and repairs with maintenance staff.
8–11 Implementation and collective action	Students executed their plans, collaborating with peers, teachers, and school staff.	Active participation within dialogic practice—students learned through action, interaction, and mutual support.	Social responsibility—taking ownership and acting for the common good.	Students organized cleaning rotations and mobilized peers to maintain shared areas.
10–12 Monitoring and adjustment	Students assessed progress, reflected on outcomes, and refined strategies with guidance.	Collective reflection and responsibility—dialogue on successes and challenges; redefining goals together.	Critical reflection Social responsibility—evaluating actions and sustaining improvements.	Students monitored the effects of their actions and identified remaining issues. They adjusted their strategies and coordinating follow-up tasks with school staff.
13–14 Presentation and community sharing	Students presented their project outcomes to peers and stakeholders.	Collective reflection and dialogue—sharing learning and acknowledging contributions of all participants.	Integration of all dimensions—reflection, co-creation, and responsibility converge through communication.	Students presented results and shared learning with peers and stakeholders.
15–16 Evaluation and future commitment	Students synthesized learning experiences and reflected individually and collectively.	Collective reflection and empowerment—students articulate personal transformation and envision next steps.	Reflexive agency—self-formation leading to sustained ethical and social engagement.	Students wrote reflections and proposed continued recycling or maintenance programs.

summarizes how the weekly learning activities aligned with these guiding principles. It illustrates how each phase of the project—from identifying problems to reflecting on outcomes—corresponded to both the emancipatory approach and the dimensions of Bildung.

The project was intentionally structured to embody the principles of the emancipatory approach (Schusler & Krasny, 2010; Wals & Jickling, 2002) and the Bildung framework (Biesta, 2002; Carlsson, 2024; Sjöström et al., 2017). Learning progressed from observation and dialogue to co-creation, action, and reflection, enabling students to develop increasing autonomy and collective responsibility. These processes reflected the three dimensions of Bildung—critical reflection, co-creation, and social responsibility—through which students cultivated reflexive agency: the capacity to think, act, and reconsider their actions toward sustainable change within their school community.

3.5. Data Collection Tools and Procedures

Data collection followed institutional ethical procedures, including formal permission from the school principal and written parental consent. Throughout the 16-week intervention, quantitative data were gathered using the Student Action Competence Questionnaire, while qualitative evidence was collected from group worksheets and reflective journals. These complementary sources captured students’ developing action competence alongside their reflections, collaborative processes, and decision-making. Employing a concurrent mixed methods design (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018), the data provided an integrated understanding of how students engaged with environmental issues, interacted with stakeholders, and responded to emerging challenges during the project.

3.5.1. Student Action Competence Questionnaire

The Student Action Competence Questionnaire comprised 19 items rated on a 3-point Likert scale (1 = low, 2 = moderate, 3 = high), designed to assess students’ action competence through their engagement in authentic environmental learning. The items reflected four key dimensions—knowledge of action possibilities, motive for action, thinking skills for action, and democratic collaboration—that were synthesized by the researchers based on themes and constructs drawn from prior studies in environmental education (Breiting & Mogensen, 1999; Dittmer et al., 2017; Emmons, 1997; Jensen & Schnack, 1997; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010; Olsson et al., 2020; Sass et al., 2020).

Each dimension was developed to represent a distinct yet interconnected aspect of action competence. Knowledge of action possibilities reflects students’ understanding of environmental problems, their causes, and their ability to propose and evaluate appropriate solutions. Motive for action captures students’ persistence, confidence, and willingness to take initiative and learn from challenges. Thinking skills for action refer to students’ capacity to plan systematically, act responsibly, and adjust their actions based on reflection and contextual feedback. Democratic collaboration emphasizes students’ ability to work collectively with peers, teachers, and community members by setting shared goals, engaging in dialogue, and assuming joint responsibility for improvement. Together, these dimensions offer a comprehensive overview of students’ cognitive, affective, and social engagement in environmental action.

All items were developed by the researchers and validated by three experts in environmental education and science teaching. Following the expert validation, a pilot test with 100 Grade 8 students confirmed the instrument’s reliability, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.88, demonstrating high internal consistency. The discrimination indices (0.26–0.68) further showed that all items effectively distinguished among students, ensuring that the questionnaire sensitively reflected variations in their action competence.

The questionnaire was administered at Weeks 8, 12, and 16 to track students’ progression over the course of the intervention. Each administration required approximately 15 min to complete. A full list of questionnaire items is provided in Appendix A.

3.5.2. Students’ Worksheets and Reflective Journals

To complement the quantitative data, qualitative evidence was obtained from students’ worksheets and group reflective journals. These tools were designed by the researchers to align with the emancipatory learning process, emphasizing dialogic inquiry, shared decision-making, and collective reflection (Schusler & Krasny, 2010; Wals & Jickling, 2002).

Students completed six worksheets corresponding to project milestones:

• Surveying environmental problems,
• Questioning and analyzing the selected issue,
• Collaborating with stakeholders to set goals,
• Analyzing the environmental problem,
• Proposing solutions and implementation, and
• Summarizing the Environmental project.

In addition, each group wrote four reflective journals to capture their evolving perspectives and sense of responsibility during critical stages: problem identification (week 2), cause and impact analysis (week 4), solution development (week 8), and project implementation (week 15). These journals provided authentic evidence of how students made sense of their learning, co-created knowledge, and expressed ownership of environmental actions.

Table 2. Summary of data collection tools, sources, and purposes.

Tool/Instrument	Source of Data	Type of Data	Purpose/Focus	Time of Collection
Student action competence questionnaire	37 Grade 8 students	Quantitative	To measure four dimensions of students’ action competence: knowledge of action possibilities, motive for action, thinking skills for action, and democratic collaboration	Weeks 8, 12, and 16
Students’ worksheets	Group work outputs	Qualitative	To document students’ processes of identifying problems, analyzing causes, designing solutions, and collaborating with stakeholders in school-based projects	Six worksheets: Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 14
Group reflective journals	Group reflections	Qualitative	To capture students’ evolving reflections, teamwork, and development of critical awareness and responsibility during project implementation	Four journals: Weeks 2, 4, 8, and 15

summarizes how the quantitative and qualitative tools were used complementarily to trace students’ development of action competence within the emancipatory and Bildung frameworks.

The quantitative data provided indicators of students’ levels of action competence, while the qualitative data illuminated the processes through which students engaged in critical reflection, co-creation, and social responsibility. Integrating these complementary data sets offered a holistic interpretation of students’ transformation and their capacity to act as reflexive, responsible members of the school community.

3.6. Data Analysis

Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed concurrently to provide a holistic understanding of how students developed action competence throughout the 16-week emancipatory environmental project. The analysis focused not only on measuring progression but also on interpreting the reflective and participatory learning processes that underpinned students’ transformation, guided by the Bildung framework.

Quantitative data from the Student Action Competence Questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Mean scores and standard deviations were calculated for each of the four dimensions—knowledge of action possibilities, motive for action, thinking skills for action, and democratic collaboration—across three time points (Weeks 8, 12, and 16) (results in Section 4.3). Frequency and percentage distributions were also computed to categorize students into high, moderate, and low competence levels, illustrating how their profiles changed over time (results in Section 4.2).

Qualitative data from students’ worksheets and reflective journals were analyzed using content analysis (Patton, 2002). Coding categories were deductively derived from the three Bildung dimensions—critical reflection, co-creation with stakeholders, and social responsibility (Biesta, 2002; Sjöström et al., 2017). Each group’s materials were treated as a case unit to identify patterns of growth and expressions of reflexive agency (results in Section 4.4). Two researchers independently coded the data, and the coding framework was refined through peer debriefing to enhance analytic rigor.

To integrate both strands of evidence, quantitative and qualitative findings were interpreted together to capture complementary perspectives on students’ development of action competence. Rather than focusing solely on differences at fixed time points, the analysis emphasized how numerical trends across the three measurements aligned with qualitative evidence of students’ reflective thinking, collaboration, and growing sense of responsibility observed throughout the intervention. This integrated interpretation offered a coherent picture of how measurable progress corresponded with students’ transformative learning experiences within the emancipatory and Bildung frameworks.

Credibility was strengthened through methodological triangulation—combining quantitative indicators with qualitative accounts that addressed different but interrelated aspects of learning (Patton, 2002)—and prolonged engagement (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), as the first author worked closely with participants throughout the project. Through this integrative analysis, the study captured both students’ measurable progression and their deeper development as reflective and responsible members of the school community.

Table 3. Coding framework with illustrative excerpts mapped to the Bildung framework.

Dimension	Description	Example Codes	Sample Excerpts
Critical reflection	Evidence that students challenge assumptions and examine causes rather than accept problems at face value.	– Questioning causes – Linking multiple factors – Revising understanding through real engagement	“What causes the litter to spread around the area?” “How does the littering problem affect people who live or walk around this area?” “How can everyone in the school help to dispose of waste properly or take part in solving this problem?” (Group 1)
Co-creation with stakeholders	Evidence that students work democratically with peers, teachers, or other stakeholders to develop and refine solutions.	– Sharing roles – Negotiating solutions – Revising plans with feedback	“Put up signs and place trash bins in areas with heavy litter, and encourage people to exchange collected waste for lucky-draw coupons.” “Additional notes and recommendations from Teacher A (Teacher responsible for the student council): 1. Collect and compress plastic bottles, then exchange them for money or coupons. 2. Post ‘No Littering’ signs in various locations.” (Group 1)
Social responsibility	Evidence that students see their actions as contributions beyond themselves and show willingness to maintain change.	– Taking action for the common good – Involving others – Sustaining improvements	“After we cleaned the weeds, we agreed to do it weekly with janitors. We planned to get gloves and tools so everyone can help.” (Group 6)

presents the coding framework with example codes and excerpts mapped to the three Bildung dimensions.

4. Results

The findings are presented in two complementary parts to provide a holistic understanding of how students developed action competence through the 16-week emancipatory environmental projects. The first part reports the quantitative results from the Student Action Competence Questionnaire, illustrating overall progression and changes across four key dimensions. The second part presents the qualitative findings derived from students’ worksheets and reflective journals, analyzed through the lens of the Bildung framework to capture deeper insights into their reflective thinking, collaboration, and sense of social responsibility. Together, these findings illustrate both the measurable growth and the transformative learning processes that shaped students’ development as active, responsible members of their school community.

4.1. Overview of Student Environmental Projects

During the 16-week emancipatory intervention, thirty-seven Grade 8 students worked in seven groups to design and implement school-based environmental projects that addressed real environmental problems within their school community. Each group selected an issue of interest, investigated its causes, and planned actions in collaboration with teachers, janitors, building-management staff, and school administrators. The projects reflected the principles of participatory and reflective learning central to the emancipatory approach and Bildung framework. An overview of the project topics, focus areas, and key actions undertaken by each group is presented in

Table 4. Summary of student environmental projects.

Group	Project Title/Focus	Main Issue Addressed	Key Stakeholders Involved	Brief Project Summary
1. Bottle of Luck	Waste reduction and recycling	Scattered waste and improper trash disposal	Teacher responsible for the student council, janitors, peers, and subject teacher	Installed new bins and signage; created a coupon-exchange system (“bottle for luck”) to motivate waste sorting; surveyed satisfaction and adjusted plans based on stakeholder feedback.
2. Cleaning the Canal	Water pollution and school sanitation	Dirty canal near the school compound	School principal, district office, janitors, peers, and subject teacher	Conducted clean-up activities, installed warning signs, and submitted letters to the district office requesting long-term canal maintenance.
3. Happy Toilet	Restroom hygiene and odor control	Unclean and unpleasant restrooms	Building-management teacher, student council, janitors, peers, and subject teacher	Designed a “Happy Toilet” campaign using posters, QR-code feedback surveys, and online communication to improve cleanliness and user responsibility.
4. Reducing Mosquito Breeding Grounds	Health and safety	Standing water and mosquito larvae	Subject teacher, janitors, and health-promotion committee	Inspected potential breeding sites, drained water, and educated peers about dengue prevention.
5. Tile Repair	Campus safety and maintenance	Broken or uneven floor tiles	Maintenance staff, administrators, and subject teacher	Surveyed hazardous areas, mapped damaged tiles, and submitted improvement proposals to school management for repair prioritization.
6. Weed Removal around Power Poles	School aesthetics and safety	Overgrown weeds near electrical poles	Janitors, maintenance staff, peers, and subject teacher	Organized regular weed-removal activities with janitors and classmates; developed a weekly maintenance schedule to sustain improvements.
7. Eliminating Odors from Restroom Drainage System	Indoor air quality and hygiene	Odor and drainage problems in restrooms	Building-management teacher, janitors, peers, and subject teacher	Used charcoal to absorb odors around restroom drains and proposed a plan to redesign the drainage system for long-term improvement.

, with additional details and examples of group worksheets and student reflective artifacts provided in the Supplementary Materials.

These projects provided authentic opportunities for students to connect classroom learning with real environmental issues in their immediate surroundings. By working collaboratively with different school stakeholders, students practiced shared decision-making, problem-solving, and collective reflection—key principles of the emancipatory approach. The diversity of the projects illustrates how an ordinary school setting can become a meaningful context for developing environmental awareness and agency among young learners.

4.2. Overall Action Competence Levels After the Emancipatory Environmental Projects

Table 5. Frequency and percentage of students by action competence level.

Competence Level	Week 8	%	Week 12	%	Week 16	%
High (45–57)	11	29.73	15	40.54	28	75.68
Moderate (32–44)	22	59.46	21	56.76	8	21.62
Low (19–31)	4	10.81	1	2.70	1	2.70
Total	37	100	37	100	37	100

presents the results from the Student Action Competence Questionnaire, which students completed at three points during the 16-week intervention (weeks 8, 12, and 16). The data show a consistent upward trend in students’ levels of action competence over time.

At the beginning of the project (week 8), most students (59.46%) demonstrated moderate levels of action competence, while 29.73% were in the high category and 10.81% in the low category. By week 16, the proportion of students in the high category had risen markedly to 75.68%, whereas those in the moderate and low categories had declined to 21.62% and 2.70%, respectively. This pattern indicates a steady and substantial improvement in students’ overall action competence throughout the intervention.

These findings suggest that the emancipatory school-based environmental projects—which emphasized problem identification, collaboration, and reflective learning—effectively supported students’ growth in knowledge, motivation, and democratic collaboration.

4.3. Component Analysis of Action Competence

Analysis of students’ self-reported scores across the four dimensions of action competence showed a consistent upward trend over the 16-week project (Figure 1). On a three-point scale, mean scores for all dimensions increased from Week 8 to Week 16, indicating that students perceived themselves as engaging in action-oriented learning more frequently over time.

Knowledge of action possibilities rose from 2.13 in Week 8 to 2.39 in Week 16, suggesting that students became increasingly aware of concrete ways to address environmental issues in their school. Motive for action also increased, from 2.21 to 2.41, with a slight plateau at Week 12 before rising again, reflecting a gradual strengthening of students’ willingness and sense of responsibility to take action. Thinking skills for action showed a marked gain, from 2.07 to 2.41, indicating improved capacity to analyze problems, plan steps, and make reasoned decisions about environmental improvement.

The largest increase was found in democratic collaboration, which rose from 2.05 in Week 8 to 2.45 in Week 16. This pattern points to substantial growth in students’ collaboration with peers and stakeholders, shared decision-making, and participation in collective action. Taken together, the dimension-specific trajectories (Figure 1) illustrate a steady expansion of students’ action competence profile, with particularly strong gains in their ability to think with others and act together in democratic ways.

To gain deeper insight into how students experienced and interpreted their development through the lens of Bildung, the following section presents qualitative findings drawn from their group worksheets and reflective journals.

4.4. Qualitative Findings Interpreted Through the Bildung Framework

The qualitative analysis of students’ worksheets and reflective journals from seven project groups (G1–G7) was guided by the Bildung framework, which conceptualizes education as a lifelong process of self-formation. This framework highlights the interconnected dimensions of critical reflection, co-creation with stakeholders, and social responsibility, each representing an expression of reflexive agency—the ability to think, act, and evaluate one’s actions in relation to social and ecological contexts.

Overall, the findings revealed clear evidence of students’ growth in action competence as they moved from viewing environmental problems merely as cleaning tasks toward engaging in critical analysis of underlying causes and consequences. Students demonstrated an emerging ability to identify structural factors behind school-based environmental issues and to connect these with broader concerns about safety and well-being in their community. In addition, they expanded the scope of their problem-solving by seeking collaboration with higher-level personnel and external agencies, illustrating a developing capacity for co-creation with stakeholders. Finally, they exhibited a growing sense of social responsibility through efforts to build sustainable systems and through their awareness of their own roles as active, responsible citizens within the school community.

Taken together, these findings portray a transformative learning process in which students’ participation evolved from task-oriented compliance to thoughtful, collaborative, and socially engaged action—reflecting the essence of Bildung as both personal and collective self-formation.

4.4.1. Critical Reflection

This dimension highlights evidence of students’ ability to challenge assumptions, analyze causes, and connect multiple factors rather than accepting problems at face value. It captures how students began to engage in deeper inquiry, linking structural, behavioral, and contextual conditions contributing to school-based environmental issues.

Across all groups, students showed notable growth in analytical depth and ethical understanding. They moved from merely observing visible problems to questioning structural and behavioral causes and connecting these to shared well-being and collective responsibility. This development reflects the early stages of reflexive agency, where critical reflection functions as both a cognitive and moral process—an essential foundation of Bildung and emancipatory environmental education.

To illustrate this dimension in greater detail, the qualitative analysis revealed two interconnected themes, which illuminate how students engaged in increasingly complex forms of environmental reasoning.

• Theme 1: Questioning Causes and Linking Multiple Factors

Students demonstrated analytical thinking that extended beyond surface-level observation. They formulated probing questions to identify root causes, examine contributing factors, and distinguish between behavioral and structural responsibilities.

For example, Group 1 (Bottle for Luck), who addressed waste scattered near the football field, asked: “What causes the litter to spread around the area?” and “What factors contribute to the littering problem in this area, and in what ways?”—showing a shift from describing the problem to probing causal mechanisms.

Group 5 (Tile Repair), which investigated cracked pavement, raised more technically oriented questions such as: “Does the construction material make the surface weak?” and “How old is the structure?” They also questioned managerial responsibility: “Why hasn’t the director hired someone to fix it? Which department can we contact?”

Similarly, Group 3 (Happy Toilet) examined behavioral causes behind restroom misuse, asking: “What makes students hang out in the restroom behind Building 3?”

Taken together, these examples show students connecting symptoms with deeper human, structural, and institutional causes rather than treating environmental problems as isolated incidents.

• Theme 2: Recognizing Health and Safety Risks for the Common Good

Students also connected environmental issues to broader implications for safety and well-being in the school community. Rather than selecting topics based solely on cleanliness or appearance, they prioritized problems posing potential harm, demonstrating emerging civic and ethical awareness.

Group 6 (Weed Removal around Power Poles) examined the danger of tall weeds near the transformer: “It could cause a short circuit… dry grass could catch fire.”

Group 4 (Reducing Mosquito Breeding Grounds) chose their issue due to concerns about dengue fever, explaining: “We don’t want anyone in school to get dengue,” and noting that “25 people were bitten by mosquitoes in the area.”

Group 5 (Tile Repair) emphasized that cracked pavement frequently caused accidents: “accidents often happen from this problem, such as slipping and getting injured.”

These reflections illustrate how students reframed local environmental concerns as issues of community safety and public health, showing a shift toward collective responsibility.

4.4.2. Co-Creation with Stakeholders

This dimension provides evidence that students worked democratically in planning, negotiating, and refining their problem-solving strategies in collaboration with peers, teachers, and other relevant stakeholders. Through these interactions, students learned to view environmental action as a shared, dialogic process rather than an individual task.

Across all groups, students increasingly shifted from working independently to engaging in collaborative negotiation and participatory decision-making. They learned to communicate with authority figures, incorporate feedback, and distribute responsibilities within and beyond their groups. This relational and dialogic orientation reflects the Bildung ideal of learning through co-construction and fosters students’ reflexive agency as cooperative change agents within their school community.

To illustrate this dimension more concretely, the qualitative findings revealed two interconnected themes that demonstrate how students engaged in collaborative environmental action.

• Theme 1: Negotiating Solutions and Coordinating with Authorities

Students recognized that many environmental problems extended beyond their immediate control and therefore required negotiation or partnership with authority figures—both inside and outside the school.

For instance, Group 2 (Cleaning the Canal) proposed a solution that required external support. They concluded that they would “write a letter to the school principal to request help from the Phra Khanong District Office to clean the canal,” signaling a willingness to collaborate beyond school personnel.

Group 7 (Eliminating Odors from the Restroom Drainage System) planned to consult experts for a long-term structural solution, stating: “Step 1: contact the related agency,” and emphasizing that “this structural problem needs help from responsible authorities.”

Group 5 (Tile Repair) reflected on their personal development in approaching senior staff: “What I learned was not to give up and to be brave enough to talk with important people.” They also recommended “asking the maintenance staff or the teacher in charge to help contact a technician.”

These examples show that students learned to identify appropriate channels of authority, initiate collaboration with decision-makers, and extend their environmental action beyond peer-led efforts—an essential step in democratic engagement.

• Theme 2: Revising Plans and Creating Two-Way Communication Channels

Students also demonstrated flexibility and openness in revising their plans based on feedback from teachers, peers, and other stakeholders. They refined their strategies, tools, and communication methods to enhance project effectiveness.

Group 1 (Bottle for Luck) refined their recycling initiative after receiving feedback from the teacher responsible for the student council. Following his recommendations—“collect and compress plastic bottles to exchange for money or coupons” and “post ‘No Littering’ signs in various locations”—the group adjusted their plan accordingly. These suggestions helped refine both the operational steps and the communication strategies of their project.

Group 3 (Happy Toilet) strengthened their feedback mechanism by transforming a traditional paper-based comment box into a digital communication platform: “We created a Line Open Chat, posters, and a feedback link,” later confirming, “We changed from a box to a feedback link.”

These revisions indicate how students integrated stakeholder feedback into their ongoing work and established two-way communication channels—moving away from one-way implementation toward participatory and iterative improvement.

4.4.3. Social Responsibility

This dimension highlights evidence that students viewed their actions as meaningful contributions to the school community rather than as individual achievements. They also demonstrated a willingness to sustain the positive changes they had initiated, reflecting a growing sense of civic engagement and ethical responsibility.

Across all groups, students increasingly recognized how their personal behaviors affected others and the shared environment. They began to sustain improvements collectively, value personal discipline, and see their actions as part of a broader commitment to community well-being—marking the emergence of moral agency within the Bildung framework.

To illustrate this dimension in greater depth, the qualitative analysis revealed two themes that capture how students enacted and internalized social responsibility.

• Theme 1: Sustaining Improvements and Involving Others

Students created mechanisms and agreements that promoted continued participation and long-term maintenance of their projects, extending their efforts beyond one-time activities. Their actions showed an understanding that environmental improvement requires shared responsibility and ongoing commitment.

For example, Group 1 (Bottle for Luck) established a recycling initiative that allowed students to “exchange recyclable bottles for lucky-draw coupons,” designed to motivate proper waste disposal and cultivate long-term recycling habits among peers.

Similarly, Group 6 (Weed Removal around Power Poles) demonstrated ongoing commitment by forming an agreement with janitors to continue the work: “After we cleaned the weeds, we agreed to do it weekly with janitors.” They also created a structured schedule—“We planned to do it during the eighth period, about 50 min each week.”

These examples illustrate students’ growing capacity to move beyond immediate clean-up actions and develop shared systems that support sustained environmental care.

• Theme 2: Recognizing Personal Responsibility and Disciplined Citizenship

Students reflected on their actions in ways that revealed personal transformation and a heightened sense of responsibility toward the common good. They recognized how individual discipline contributes to collective well-being and environmental quality.

For instance, Group 2 (Cleaning the Canal) expressed a shared awareness of personal and collective responsibility: “It made us realize that when we eat and don’t throw trash away properly, it becomes someone else’s burden to clean.” This reflection indicates ethical awareness and empathy toward the labor of others.

Group 1 (Bottle for Luck) described behavioral changes becoming habitual: “We’ve developed the habit of picking up litter whenever we see it on the ground. It now feels natural to throw trash into the bin.”

Meanwhile, Group 7 (Eliminating Odors from the Restroom Drainage System) noted their contribution to the school community: “We learned about problems and impacts in our school. We helped society—not much, but it might still be useful.”

These reflections reveal students’ emerging sense of disciplined citizenship and their recognition that even small acts of care contribute to the common good.

5. Discussion

This study contributes to the expanding discussion on how students in basic education develop action competence through emancipatory and context-based approaches to environmental learning. It addresses a research gap highlighted in earlier work (e.g., Hopkins, 2015; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010) by providing empirical evidence from a lower-secondary context that integrates Bildung principles into authentic school projects. In doing so, it advances the recent call to view environmental education not only as individual behavioral change but as collective, situated learning embedded in local social-ecological systems (Wheaton et al., 2024).

The findings are in line with previous studies emphasizing participatory and reflective learning as key mechanisms for developing action competence (Cincera & Kovacikova, 2014; Torsdottir et al., 2024). They also extend insights from place-based education research (Jaikrasen & Ketsing, 2025), showing how students’ engagement with their immediate school environment nurtures both affective connection and civic responsibility. Consistent with Biesta (2002) and Carlsson (2024), the results illustrate that Bildung-informed environmental projects can cultivate ethical self-formation, where students perceive their actions as meaningful contributions to the community rather than isolated tasks.

Building on these findings, it becomes important to understand why students in this study demonstrated significant growth in all dimensions of action competence—particularly in democratic collaboration, which showed the greatest improvement. From a Bildung perspective, such development does not arise merely from increased environmental knowledge but from the quality of social interaction, reflection, and ethical engagement embedded in the learning process (Biesta, 2002; Sjöström et al., 2017). The following discussion interprets these results by examining how the structure of the emancipatory projects and the sociocultural conditions of the school context contributed to students’ holistic growth in action competence.

5.1. Dialogic and Participatory Learning Fostered Reflexive Agency Across All Dimensions of Action Competence

The emancipatory structure of the school-based projects created dialogic and participatory spaces where students were encouraged to question, negotiate, and act collaboratively rather than follow prescribed solutions. Such dialogic engagement allowed learners to develop reflexive awareness—an essential component of Bildung—by continually linking thought and action within authentic contexts (Biesta, 2002; Sjöström et al., 2017). Through cycles of identifying problems, planning solutions, and reflecting on outcomes, students advanced in all four dimensions of action competence: they enhanced knowledge of action possibilities, strengthened motivation through ownership, improved thinking skills via inquiry and problem-solving, and deepened democratic collaboration by sharing decision-making power. This process mirrors Wals et al.’s (2008) notion of emancipatory learning, in which understanding and action co-evolve through social dialogue and collective reflection. The emphasis on equality of voice and co-construction of meaning enabled students to see themselves not as recipients of knowledge but as contributors to shared change, thereby fostering competence that was both cognitive and moral in nature.

5.2. Collective and Ethically Grounded Collaboration Nurtured Democratic Competence as a Core Expression of Bildung

Students’ notable progress in democratic collaboration reflects how Bildung operates as a moral and social process of self-formation through engagement with others. By collaborating with peers, teachers, janitors, and even district officers, students experienced what Carlsson (2024) calls the “twinning of competence and Bildung”—where practical action and ethical growth intertwine. This collective practice aligns with Torsdottir et al. (2024), who demonstrated that student participation in shared decision-making enhances both confidence and a sense of efficacy in contributing to community improvement. In the present study, students’ negotiations, role-sharing, and joint reflections with diverse stakeholders allowed them to exercise autonomy while recognizing interdependence, a balance central to democratic education (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). The social dimension of Bildung thus became visible: students not only collaborated effectively but also developed empathy, respect, and accountability—transforming participation from compliance to co-agency. This integration of ethical reflection and collective responsibility explains why democratic collaboration showed the most substantial improvement among all competence dimensions.

6. Implications

The findings highlight how students’ action competence can be meaningfully cultivated when educational practice moves beyond instrumental environmental activities toward emancipatory learning. Three implications emerge:

6.1. Integrate Democratic Participation into Environmental Learning Contexts

Students in this study developed stronger motive for action and democratic collaboration when they were invited to make decisions, share responsibilities, and negotiate solutions collectively. This aligns with research showing that participation in authentic decision-making enhances students’ confidence in their influence and ownership of sustainability actions (Cincera & Kovacikova, 2014; Torsdottir et al., 2024). Schools should therefore design environmental projects that embed shared goal-setting and deliberation, enabling students to experience democracy in practice rather than as abstract instruction.

6.2. Adopt an Emancipatory Rather than Purely Instrumental Pedagogical Stance

The development of thinking skills for action and motive for action in this study reflected a learning process that encouraged reflection, ethical reasoning, and negotiation of meaning—key features of Bildung-oriented education (Mogensen & Schnack, 2010). As Wals et al. (2008) argue, education for sustainability becomes transformative when it balances instrumental goals with emancipatory learning, allowing students to co-construct understandings and question dominant assumptions. Teachers should thus act as facilitators of dialogue rather than transmitters of predetermined “green” behaviors.

6.3. Foster Collective and Sociocultural Learning Through Community Engagement

Students’ increased knowledge of action possibilities was most evident when projects connected classroom inquiry with real environmental issues and community stakeholders. Such collaborative activity resonates with sociocultural perspectives, where learning and action are co-constructed through social participation (Wheaton et al., 2024). Teachers and schools should create partnerships with local communities to situate sustainability learning in shared practices that develop collective responsibility for environmental change.

7. Limitations and Future Directions

This study offers in-depth insights into how school-based environmental projects can foster students’ action competence through everyday experiences, stakeholder collaboration, and democratic participation. At the same time, several limitations should be acknowledged. First, while all students engaged in the project, the depth of participation varied, with some taking more initiative and others remaining more reserved. These differences shaped the collective process and influenced how responsibilities were distributed. Second, although students showed increasing confidence in communicating with teachers, janitors, and administrators, some proposed changes were constrained by school hierarchies and policies. Rather than undermining the project’s value, these moments revealed real-world complexities that shaped students’ learning and their sense of agency.

This context-specific approach, grounded in one school community over a semester, was not intended to produce generalizable outcomes. Instead, it aimed to understand how action competence might emerge through situated, participatory processes. Future research could examine how these learning processes unfold over longer periods or in schools with different leadership structures. Studies might also explore how teachers, peers, and institutional actors can co-create more enabling conditions for student-led environmental action.

8. Conclusions

This study demonstrates that emancipatory, school-based environmental projects can effectively foster students’ action competence when guided by the Bildung perspective. The integration of dialogic learning, shared decision-making, and collective reflection enabled students to link knowledge with ethical and civic responsibility, transforming their participation from task compliance to reflective and collaborative action. Quantitative findings revealed steady progress across all four dimensions of action competence—knowledge of action possibilities, motive for action, thinking skills for action, and democratic collaboration—while qualitative evidence illustrated deeper changes in students’ critical reflection, co-creation with stakeholders, and sense of social responsibility. Together, these outcomes affirm that learning environments grounded in emancipation and Bildung can cultivate young learners’ reflexive agency and empower them to act as responsible members of their school community. Such development contributes directly to education for a sustainable future by nurturing the dispositions, values, and competences needed to address real-world environmental challenges.