What is "Action"?
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Action in Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP) isn’t just doing — it’s doing that matters. In AOP, action is more than completing a classroom task - it’s a deliberate, informed process aimed at real-world change. To support transformative sustainability education, it is useful for educators to understand the interrelated dimensions of action.
Action is informed, intentional, meaningful, consequential, and contextualized.
Instead of guiding students toward specific actions or predetermined outcomes, educators can use teaching strategies that enable students to identify and address a sustainability issue that matters to students themselves. This includes helping them clarify their desired outcomes, propose relevant actions, and map out a course of action to address the problem.
Not all Doing is Action: Action vs. Activity
Not all Doing is Action: Action vs. Activity
Since traditional teaching and learning is based on students participating in activities, it becomes important to differentiate these activities from actions. In the AOP framework, “action” surpasses the boundaries of routine classroom “activity”. Activity refers to tasks, exercises, assignments, or projects that students complete, often as part of a planned curriculum.
Activities are typically:
Pre-structured, A designed and directed, with specific predetermined instructions and expected outcomes.
Compliance-based, with students participating because it is required, not necessarily because they see personal or community value in the work.
Isolated from real-world impact, because they are : designed to remain within the classroom. Their intended outcomes rarely extend to influencing students’ lives, or real-world systems, communities, or environments.
Assessment-focused; shaped by accountability pressures and grading requirements, where the emphasis lands on tasks that demonstrate mastery.
Oriented solely toward individual learning outcomes: individual learning is the objective rather than coupling learning with contributing.
Classroom experiences can look similar on the surface, but the underlying purpose and impact can be vastly different. While activities are often procedural and self-contained, action in Action-Oriented Pedagogies is meaningful, collective, and transformative—driven by students and connected to real-world change.
Below, we outline key differences between typical classroom activities and action as envisioned through AOP.
ACTION
ACTION
Co-created with students and community: Shaped by student concerns, lived experiences, and shared decision-making with teachers, peers, and/or community partners
Agency-driven participation: Students lead decision-making, shaping goals, process, and outcomes; taking shared responsibility for collective work
Learning is outward-facing: Initiatives extend beyond the classroom, influencing school, community, or ecosystem in meaningful ways
Outcomes are collective: Focused on collective learning and contributing to shared goals to achieve collective impact on a sustainability issue that matters to students
Leaves a legacy: Knowledge, relationships, or structures endure beyond a single project
ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY
Predetermined by teacher or curriculum: Structured to meet predefined learning targets, with the aim to demonstrate individual understanding or meet assessment goals
Compliance-based participation: Students follow instructions and/or rubrics, with limited autonomy or agency. Participation is routine and required rather than self-motivated
Outcomes are individual: Focus is nearly exclusively on personal performance, grades, or mastery
Learning is classroom-bound: Activities are typically self-contained, assessed for completion or accuracy, and rarely intended to affect the world beyond the classroom
Ends with task completion: Once completed, work is discarded or archived
Quick Self-Check: Can You Spot AOP-Aligned Action?
Quick Self-Check: Can You Spot AOP-Aligned Action?
Test your ability to distinguish between classroom activities and transformative actions that align with the AOP framework. See if you can identify what real action looks like—and why it matters.
Not all doing is action. In many classrooms, students are busy completing tasks—but those tasks aren’t always oriented toward real-world change. This short quiz invites you to explore the difference between typical classroom activities and the kinds of informed, intentional, meaningful, contextualized, and consequential actions emphasized in the AOP framework. Through a series of examples, you’ll be asked to reflect on whether a student’s effort qualifies as “action” in the AOP sense—and why that distinction matters. Use this tool to sharpen your understanding of what AOP-aligned action can look like in practice.
What Educators Can Do: How to Foster Action in Our Classrooms
What Educators Can Do: How to Foster Action in Our Classrooms
Students deserve opportunities to turn ideas, beliefs, and passions into real actions that tackle real-world problems.
In AOPs, the goal is to shift from students merely doing activities to becoming agents of change—envisioning, planning, enacting, and sustaining actions that matter. Here are some things educators can do to foster meaningful student action:
Ask students what sustainability issues matter to them
Support students in defining success and impact
Invite community partners to co-plan
Use open-ended structures that allow for student ownership
Keep reading through this AOP Playbook - we've included lots more ideas throughout!
"Real Work, Real Consequences" Stories
Stories of students and educators taking meaningful action for sustainability—real work with real consequences that shape just and livable futures. These narratives highlight experiences, actions, and reflections through the lens of Action-Oriented Pedagogies."Real Work, Real Consequences" Stories
Brianne structures every unit around “What are we going to do about this?” so students turn science learning into real-world action—from waste audits to climate modeling and community sustainability projects. Her classroom fosters agency by keeping problems open-ended, validating student ideas, and making action the goal of learning.
Curated Resources for Exploration, Planning, and Practice
Curated Resources for Exploration, Planning, and Practice
Further reading to expand and deepen understandings of "Action" in the AOP framework
School Participatory Budgeting: The Green Participatory Budgeting for Green Schools and Colleges initiative enables students to directly engage in democratic decision-making by proposing, developing, and voting on sustainability-related projects that use real school funds to improve their campuses and communities.
The K–12 Environmental Education: Guidelines for Excellence is rich with examples of student-centered, real-world, consequential learning that meet AOP’s definition of action—as informed, intentional, meaningful, contextualized, and consequential.
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