Applications Invited for Call for Proposals: the Future of Learning, the Future of our Planet

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About the Organization

For more than 130 years, the National Geographic Society has funded the best and brightest individuals dedicated to scientific discovery and understanding of our world.

Our historic commitment to dauntless exploration dates back to our founding in 1888 when 33 prominent scholars and scientists established an organization dedicated to the “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.”

About the Grant

Our world is facing big, complex, and rapidly changing environmental and societal challenges. Regardless of what the future may hold, learners will need support to develop capacities to learn about, care for and take action to protect our world. How do you imagine the future for our planet and its people? What skills, attitudes, and knowledge do people need in order to design a future for our planet that leads to healthier outcomes for people and nature? What are the learning solutions that can develop knowledge, attitudes, and skills to enact that future? How might we change minds and behaviors to achieve positive impacts for the immense biodiversity of our planet and its people?

Building the future we want for our planet and its people involves designing for that future today. What we have learned from across disciplines is likely to inform successful teaching and learning approaches to these complex, rapidly changing, and interconnected challenges.

To meet this future we will need to develop and scale models of what effective learning looks like – not just in formal education but also in informal and community education spaces, through career-connected learning, and with learners of any age from young children to adults.

Our Approach to Education:

National Geographic is where education meets exploration. A pillar of our mission since our founding, education shapes how we engage with each other and our surroundings and inspires educators and learners to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world.

At NGS we fund bold, innovative, and transformative work. We believe that while science provides us with the facts, solutions and data we need to better understand the world around us, and storytelling provides the emotional connection that inspires us to care about the world, education prepares us with the knowledge, skills and tools to take action to protect the planet.

We view education as both a discipline and a practice. We define education as the process and methods of teaching and learning where learners of any age acquire and cultivate attitudes, skills, and knowledge.

We also hold an expansive view of educators, defining an educator as any learning professional or community member who imparts knowledge in such a way as to enable conditions for change in a learner.

We believe that learners can be any age, from a young child to an adult learner, and we believe that lifelong learning matters. We also believe that learning can happen anywhere – in school or out of school, through formal or informal education, and in a variety of settings.

Through our grants program we are looking for education projects that:

• Advance knowledge about how to spark curiosity and inspire learners of all ages to care for and protect our world
• Pilot new, or scale proven, educational solutions
• Enable learners to acquire new knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes that help them care for and protect our world
• Use interdisciplinary approaches

What We Aim to Fund with this Call:

This funding opportunity supports projects or research that enacts the future today. We aim to support projects that cultivate in learners of any age the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to take action in ways that benefit the planet and its people.

Proposals may contain one or both elements of the following:

• Project: a pilot of a new learning solution, or scaling of a learning solution with some evidence of effectiveness, to a new geography or population of learners;
• Research: Measurement of the effectiveness of educational innovations that develop learners of all ages’ skills, attitudes, and knowledge needed to design a future for our planet that benefits people and nature.

Competitive Proposals:

Competitive proposals should describe:

• The future that you are planning toward.
• Educational projects or research that leverage novel approaches, with potential for scale and impact, and ideas that span disciplinary, political, geographic, or cultural boundaries.
• The community of learners you intend to reach.
• The learning solution intended to develop capabilities in learners.
• The skills, attitudes, and knowledge your project intends to cultivate in learners in order to design a future for our planet that leads to healthier outcomes for people and nature to live and thrive.
• Anticipated outcomes including the intended impact(s) on the learners in addition to any impact(s) on the environment, planet, or people. Impacts should describe the knowledge, attitudes or skills to develop solutions that mutually benefit humans, ecosystems and the planet, and contribute to the knowledge base of how we develop knowledge, attitudes, and skills in people.
• Relevant inclusive methodologies employed in project or research design

Projects do not need to use technology in order to be competitive, but may use technology as a tool to achieve learning goals. All topics related to our focus areas – Ocean, Land, Wildlife, Human Histories and Cultures, Planetary Health, and Space – are encouraged and will be considered.

Who Should Apply

This highly competitive opportunity is open to applicants over the age of 18. Funding may be awarded in either a Level I or Level II grant. Please note that individuals who are National Geographic Explorers must apply for Level II funding.

The lead applicant must show evidence of experience using education as part of a deliberate strategy to achieve goals, and experience implementing education programs for learners of any age (note: this may be in a classroom setting or any other formal or informal place of learning). Academic degrees and/or credentials are NOT required.

Eligibility

• Project must align to the Education primary focus
• Project must align to at least one of National Geographic’s six focus areas: Ocean, Land, Wildlife, Human Histories and Cultures, Planetary Health, Space
• Candidate must not be a current National Geographic staff member
• Candidate must be over the age of 18
• Additional information on eligibility is available in our online application system.

How to Apply

The National Geographic Society will host two one-hour informational webinars dedicated to this Request for Proposals (RfP). There is no need to attend more than one webinar as the information presented will be the same.

• Thursday, October 9th at 12:00 UTC/8:00 AM EDT

• Friday, October 10th at 19:00 UTC/3:00 PM EDT

During these webinars we will share information about the RfP and answer questions. If you are interested in participating in a webinar, please register here.

For more information please check the Link

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Tags Education and Education Technology (edtech) Environment and Sustainability Others