A digital learning resource to enable critical reflection for sustainable thinking and actions in textile-related scenarios

What?
Choices for future, is a digital adaptive tool for students in lower secondary school. The aim is to provide students with a better understanding of textile sustainability and to engage them in critical reflection regarding the sustainability of their clothing and consumption.

How?
This master’s thesis explores how design methodology can contribute to engaging sustainability education among students, specifically in Arts and Crafts classes. Choices for future, is a digital tool co-created with teenagers and based on classroom insights by teachers. By utilizing design fiction and game elements, the adaptive learning tool enables students to take action, providing them with adaptive suggestions based on their interaction with the digital tool. It serves as a quick and engaging project starter, used in the classroom to make the students start to problematize the topic of overconsumption.

Why?
We need to change the consumption culture as soon as possible. Every year, people in Norway buy more than 11 kilos of newly produced clothes. Later, 50% of the clothes, many times still useful, end up in the trash. Teenagers should be given the possibility of influencing their future and becoming participating citizens. The initial insights from
interviews with teachers revealed that there is a need for tangible ways of learning about overconsumption in order to enable critical reflection and actions. Choices for future contributes by quickly, concisely, and efficiently introducing the topic to teenagers with the aim of changing the consumption culture in Norway.
Keywords: Textile sustainability, overconsumption of clothes, reducing textile waste, Arts
and Crafts, lower secondary school, Design fiction, critical reflection