Exploring directions for post-pandemic disaster education through interdisciplinary collaboration between the UK and South Korea

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One of the critical questions that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed concerns the relationship of science, technology and society in times of disasters, and particularly how such a relationship should be addressed to young people across different stages of education. In the past two decades, several major disasters in South Korea have provoked science and technology educators' awareness of the need for disaster education. Likewise, the UK has been under the threat of natural and technological disasters arising from climate change as well as increasing complexities of technological systems. Although an informed understanding of disasters would be essential to promote disaster resilience and social justice through education, systematic efforts to integrate science and humanities in the context of disaster education have been scarce.This proposal aims to set up a sustainable network between leading disaster education research groups in the UK and South Korea. This 18-month project involving 11 researchers from education, socioecology of disasters, history and social studies of science will provide a unique opportunity for interdisciplinary and intercultural disaster education research. The UK team based at the University of Southampton (http://www.mshe.org.uk/, https://www.southampton.ac.uk/lifelab/) will be led by Park (PI), an expert in disaster education, and will also include experts in science education and health education across primary and secondary education levels. The partners at the Research Center for Hazard Literacy Education at Ewha Womans University are experts in socioscientific issues (SSI) education (http://enactproject.com/). Further, our partners at the Centre for Anthropocene Research, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) (https://anthropocenestudies.com/) have expertise in disaster research through historical and sociological lenses and have engaged in various disaster education activities. Collaboration between the three groups will offer a timely opportunity for knowledge exchange and dissemination in an interdisciplinary and intercultural manner. We build on our previous work on disaster education (Lee & Jeon, 2015; Park, 2020), disaster studies (Kang, 2016; Knowles, 2012; Park, 2019) and SSI education (Christodoulou et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2012; Lee & Lee, 2021; Ratcliffe & Grace, 2003) to develop a new conceptualisation of disaster education that integrates the scientific, technological and social aspects of disasters that can guide future research and practice.Using the networking grant with the support of existing institutional funding sources, we will organise conferences and seminars to bring together knowledge and experiences of disaster education in the UK and South Korean contexts. Members will work together to identify new avenues for cross-disciplinary collaboration in disaster education research through two intensive disaster education conferences and develop a research proposal to continue with the international collaboration. Through various knowledge exchange activities including conferences, seminars, early career researcher exchanges and mentoring, the network will explore directions for enhancing disaster preparedness and resilience in young people through intercultural research and education. There will be events to interact with teachers, which will help disseminate the project activities and receive user feedback. The project activities will be shared via a project website that is accessible for both researchers and practitioners. Project outputs will include opinion pieces, a disaster education resource book, an edited book and three journal articles, each targeted at different groups of users. These outputs will have an appeal for academics, university educators, teachers of different subjects (science, geography, social studies, history, etc.) and policymakers in the UK, South Korea and other countries.