Exploring Regenerative K–12 Education
At GSSW, Flynn (MSW ’17) began working with Research Professor Kevin Morris, Clinical Professor Philip Tedeschi and others at the Institute for Human–Animal Connection, which Flynn says bridged her past work and her future interests. She observes, “Humans are so biological and we belong to nature. That was a thread I’ve been following ever since. How does that accountability to nature influence our health? How do we need to be accountable to nature for the relationship to be generative rather than extractive?”
Flynn is now pursuing those questions via her own research in GSSW’s doctoral program. “The bulk of my scholarship is really focused on how can we come into relationship with ourselves and one another in recognition that we belong to nature and we belong to each other? How can we create systems and cultures that are regenerative and not extractive?”
Flynn’s dissertation, “Equipping Young People to Build a Regenerative Society: Pathways to Social–Ecological Activism,” is a three-paper project that examines ways to create pathways for young people’s social-ecological activism through regenerative education in formal school settings. She explains that regenerative education ensures that principles of restoration and equity are embedded within teaching and learning.
For her first paper, Flynn conducted a systematic scoping review of the empirical literature, analyzing the barriers and facilitators of young people’s social–ecological activism; she then used qualitative analysis to connect the barriers and facilitators to principles of complex adaptive systems theory. She aims to generate actionable insights to accelerate youth social–ecological activism through regenerative education. For her second paper, Flynn conducted a constructivist grounded theory analysis of qualitative interview data from 25 school educators, students, parents, and regenerative scholars to develop a framework for regenerative education in youth social–ecological activism, which provides insights into the enablers, barriers and mechanisms of regenerative education and can guide intervention design and inform future research.
Finally, the third paper will examine how social–ecological equity can be effectively integrated into schools by preparing teachers to become regenerative educators. For the project, Flynn, Clinical Professor Sarah Bexell and alumna and Adjunct Instructor Julia Senecal (MSW ’19, LSW) partnered with K–12 public school educators to co-design a prototype regenerative education professional development program. They also analyzed interviews with K–12 community members to generate empirically grounded insights into the program’s essential components, intended outcomes and strategies for integrating regenerative education professional development into schools.
Flynn’s dissertation proposal received GSSW’s 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Proposal Award. In her proposal, Flynn notes that young people of color and those living in low-income and Indigenous communities are disproportionally impacted by climate change and other environmental issues such as water quality, natural disasters and displacement. She explains, “Young people’s social–ecological activism is a form of sociopolitical engagement that provides them with the skills to resist oppressive social, environmental, and political systems, including participating in environmental advocacy … This is especially crucial for youth who have faced systemic injustice, as they can contribute critical perspectives and local knowledge to enhance policymaking and challenge dominant narratives.”
According to Flynn, “regenerative education is an emerging pedagogy that employs a whole-school approach, engaging educators, youth, families, and communities as co-designers of social–ecological justice rather than placing responsibility solely on teachers or unrealistically on students with limited institutional power … By integrating systems thinking, political participation, and ecological literacy across all dimensions of schooling, it mobilizes both youth agency and institutional resources to dismantle entrenched opportunity gaps and foster equitable social and environmental change.”
Among Flynn’s key findings, “There is a crisis of fit between the dominant paradigm that’s used in mainstream education and the social–ecological reality that we’re living in.” She explains, “We’re living in a time where education systems are still very linear, they’re very individualistic. They were designed and functioned exceptionally well to support capitalism … to create workers.” That model leaves little room for understanding and engaging with complex problems such as interrelated social–ecological challenges. Flynn notes that many students and educators, particularly those living in disproportionally impacted communities, recognize that “crisis of fit.”
In addition, Flynn says, “A lot of our educational approaches are focused on developing knowledge, skills and attitudes, but they’re not supporting socio–political development of students or teachers. They’re not supporting collective agency. They’re not supporting meaningful action, even though many youth are asking for it.”
She adds, “We’ve got to have a much more robust and integrated way of embedding socio–political development within our processes of learning across the lifespan, but especially K–12.”
Beyond her dissertation, Flynn plans to continue developing and testing the theory around regenerative K–12 education, working to make implementation feasible in the Denver community and beyond, and leveraging her research to influence policy. She notes that educators are well-positioned to be agents of systemic transformation, but they are not provided with the structural or professional support to do so. They are “between a rock and a hard place of not having the support to do the professional learning that they need to advance their own meaning-making, and especially their own agency and resiliency in participating in our movement toward this next chapter that can bring us into alignment with the social–ecological limitations of what it means to live on Earth.”
