Sustainable Living by the Bay: Improving student engagement in the science classroom for the twenty-first century

Inspiring students to be self-motivated and engaged is a challenge for all school-based curriculum reformers. A cluster of schools in the Melbourne Bayside area took up this challenge during the Australian Schools Innovations in Science, Technology and Mathematics (ASISTM)-funded initiative entitled Sustainable Living by the Bay. In this chapter, we will be sharing our experience of the project with particular reference to the two major strategies that underpinned it. The first strategy drew from Jurgen Habermas’ three knowledge generative interests, namely, technical, practical/communicative and emancipatory/critical, to provide a theoretical framework for the project. Secondly, the project adopted a pedagogical approach from the critical constructivist paradigm, which enabled a shared control of the learning process, empowering students to have a critical voice in questioning the teachers’ actions. Our experience within Sustainable Living by the Bay has been positive in improving student engagement and motivation in learning science.