CREATING HEALTHY SCHOOL ENVIRONMENTS THROUGH CHILDREN – AN ACTION COMPETENCE APPROACH

Drawing on a case study of a school in a low-income neighbourhood of an urban area in Botswana, the broader aim of this article is to explore opportunities available for developing learners’ action competence (i.e. their abilities to make decisions and act more independently or collectively) (Jensen & Schnack, 2006) to respond to environmental health issues in their school. Using focus group interviews and observations, selected primary school children are used in the study. The study further demonstrates how children can actually undertake action-oriented initiatives with the aim of developing some sense of purpose in these initiatives to improve their school environmental health