Empowering young environmental leaders: Designing interactive data visualisation to foster children's agency in eco-schools

This study takes a research-through-design approach to explore the potentials and boundaries of empowerment through interactive data visualisation (IDV) for children’s collective environmental and climate action, contextualised within an existing and globally impactful environmental education initiative, Eco-Schools. We speculate how the social valences inherent to IDV mediate collaboration between children, their peers, and adult school stakeholders and identify the critical skills and scaffolding required by children to make use of IDV toward collective environmental action. We note the dichotomy of dutiful versus disruptive actions proposed by children, underscoring the necessity for stakeholder involvement from the outset to ensure ethical viability of such initiatives. Related to this, we reflect on the ethical implications of IDV as a symbol of children’s agency, particularly when their efforts to engage peers and authority figures yield limited results. Ultimately, this study emphasises the importance of stakeholder collaboration in maximizing the potential of IDV as a multi-functional tool in children’s collective environmental action with the aim to inform the design of future climate change education programmes and IDV tools. • Interactive data visualisation (IDV) may support children’s collective environmental action. • Research-through-design informed how IDV might empower children’s environmental action. • Identifies critical skills children need to engage in collective environmental action. • Ethical considerations of IDV as a symbol of children’s agency are explored. • Stakeholder collaboration is vital for ethical and effective environmental education tools.