Creating an AOP Runway
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Before students can take informed, meaningful action, educators need time and space to explore, imagine, and design. In the Action-Oriented Pedagogies (AOP) framework, this essential preparation phase is called the runway—the work educators do to prepare for transformative learning through student-driven action.
AOP Runway: Preparing to Teach for Climate Action
AOP Runway: Preparing to Teach for Climate Action
A strong AOP runway helps educators move from vision to action by focusing on the interconnected components of:
Creating Conditions for Student Action: Action doesn’t just happen—it depends on a foundation of values, knowledge, partnerships, and community assets. These interconnected elements shape what’s possible in your classroom and community. By identifying what you (and your students) bring to the table, you ensure student action is not only feasible—but meaningful, ethical, and sustained.
Scoping the Problem Space for Action: Students need direction—but not a script. Scoping involves defining a climate or sustainability issue that is real, relevant, and appropriately bounded. You'll consider timeframes, systems, spheres of influence, and scale of impact to create a challenge that students can investigate, shape, and act on.
Once conditions are in place and the problem space is scoped, teachers need practical tools to plan learning experiences. Tools to Launch an AOP Journey includes two adaptable, teacher-facing resources that support idea generation and help you focus your own learning and align with classroom goals.
Together, these tools are designed to help you prepare for real work with real consequences—starting from where you are.
Creating an AOP Runway
Creating an AOP Runway
Designing action-oriented, climate-centered learning takes more than inspiration—it takes preparation, reflection, and intentional planning. In other words, it takes a runway.
The runway metaphor carries powerful meaning here:
Preparation before movement — You don’t launch into action without thoughtful groundwork.
Acceleration — The runway is where clarity and momentum take shape.
Takeoff — There’s an implied transformation: grounded intention → collective action.
Direction — You’re not just moving; you’re moving with purpose, toward change.
"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
Before she ever heard the term Action-Oriented Pedagogies, Mary was already walking the path. In a public middle school in Mesa, Arizona, her STEM classroom became a launchpad for sustainability learning rooted in curiosity, community, and civic imagination. With a long runway shaped by cultural responsiveness, systems thinking, and joyful experimentation, Mary’s journey into AOP is not a sudden leap—it’s a story of unfolding.
Melany’s work as a science teacher and STEM club advisor in Tucson, Arizona exemplifies how educators can intentionally build a "runway for action"—a foundation that supports students in engaging meaningfully and sustainably with climate and environmental issues over time.
Photo: Melany Coates
Curated Resources for Creating your Personalized Learning Plan
Curated Resources for Creating your Personalized Learning Plan
Further reading to support thinking about your personalized learning plan
Brokering to Disrupt Power: How to Leverage Brokering Practices to Support Equity Outcomes (Calabrese Barton, A., Ching, D., Santo, R., Hoadley, C., & Peppler, K. (2019). This brief explains how “brokering” — connecting youth to meaningful learning opportunities — can be a powerful equity-oriented practice when done intentionally. It highlights how brokers (educators, mentors, program leaders) can help young people, especially those from marginalized groups, deepen their interests, expand their social networks, and challenge dominant narratives about who can participate in STEM. The brief emphasizes that brokering can either reinforce or disrupt inequities depending on how power is negotiated, urging educators to reflect critically on their choices, value youth competencies, and create pathways that challenge traditional power structures in education and STEM fields
When Doing Good Is Good for You: Brokering Future Learning Opportunities to Youth as a Bi-Directional Co-Learning Practice (Calabrese Barton, A., Ching, D., Santo, R., Hoadley, C., & Peppler, K., 2016). This brief emphasizes that effective brokering is not a one-way process of adults connecting youth to opportunities, but a bi-directional, co-learning practice. When educators act as brokers, they not only help young people access future learning pathways but also learn from youth about their interests, assets, and desired contexts. This shift resists deficit-based views of marginalized youth and instead values the knowledge, humor, relationships, and creativity they bring. The brief urges educators to approach brokering as relationship-building, centering youth assets, and creating opportunities that reshape how young people are recognized in school and community spaces.
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