Competence in Eco-social Culture and Sustainable future

 

13. You will understand the principles and values involved in eco-social understanding of culture and sustainable development.

 

Autumn’s last teaching topic was Eco-social culture and sustainable development. A huge subject and certainly one that had out group scratching our heads possibly more than any of the previous teaching tasks.

You as a teacher might wonder what has sustainable development got to do with pedagogical studies. Well, hopefully following our session all students had gained an understanding why. We discussed the sustainable development goals for education, how Agenda 2030 impacts, not only institutions, but also us individual teachers. We also gave participants some real life example on advancing the sustainability goals.

Funnily enough just before the webinar, I was sitting in a large auditorium with my fellow research colleagues and one of the items on the agenda was to mingle with the rest of the research personal, that had grown fast over the past two years. A little bit like a quick work speed-dating. After we had done this, and made several new acquaintances, one of our professors gave a short speech on the future of research. She was of the opinion that the problems we are facing today and in the future are so complex that there is no way that we can find answers for example to UN’s sustainable development goals, without the different sciences trying to work together to find solutions. And this is what we are partly discussing also below.

 

Sustainable development

In this topic, there are lots of terms that were had some difficulties getting our heads around so decided to start with the basics: Lets define the sustainable development first:

Sustainable development has been defined by UN as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

 

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

So, what about the The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? These are also known as the Global Goals, and are 17 integrated and interrelated goals planned to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure peace and prosperity for humanity by 2030.

Picture 1: 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Source: UN

For a pretask for the session, we asked the students to familiarize themselves with the 17 SDGs. We also asked them to think about how these goals relate to Education for sustainable development. It was

 

Education for sustainable development (ESD)

Education has an important role in the achievement of the inter-connected 17 SDGs. UNESCO’s Director-General Irina Bokova has said:

“A fundamental change is needed in the way we think about education’s role in global development, because it has a catalytic impact on the well-being of individuals and the future of our planet”

 



Picture 2: ESD for 2030. Source Unesco

 

ESD stands for education for sustainable development. The aim is to:

  • raise the awareness of the 17 goals in education settings
  • promote critical and contextualized understanding of the SDGs
  • mobilize action towards the achievement of the SDGs


Eco-Social Culture

So what about the central topic ie Eco-social culture, how is that linked to these sustainability goals?

Some say that reaching the SDGs would require a transformation of our current economy, politics, and mainstream culture, leading to a fundamentally different civilization based of different values, goals, and collective behavior. What we really are talking here is eco-social wisdom or culture, which is simply ecologically and socially sustainable way of thinking.  


Role for education

Again, education has an important part to play in this:

Education that strives for eco-social sustainability provides everyone with opportunities to live a good life, in other words, it promotes planetary well-being.

Goals for education (Education for Sustainable Development Goals: learning objectives - UNESCO Digital Library):

  • To develop teaching towards ecological, social and economic sustainability at all levels of education
  • To advance collaborative problem-solving that aims at creating sustainable practices in educational communities and organisations
  • To assess the reaching of sustainable development goals in education
  • To strengthen human-nature relationship at different stages of their life
  • To advance global citizenship and planetary well-being for both human and non-human forms of life on the planet

But in order to reach the goals, we need different kind of actors and only together we can reach this better world that Agenda 2030 is reaching for:

  • ·        What is important to understand, just like in entrepreneurship education, we discussed earlier during the autumn, ESD is not only about teaching sustainable development and adding new content to courses and training.
  • ·       Schools and universities should see themselves as places of learning and experience for sustainable development and should therefore orient all their processes towards principles of sustainability.  This also includes facilities like passive energy buildings, sustainable transport options for staff and students, local produce at school canteen. In order to make this happen what we need is a concrete plan how to implement a whole-institution approach to ESD. To support these actions Unesco and its UN partners have developed guidance material on whole institution approach.

 

Main priority areas for development

There are 5 main priority areas for developments and as you can see development is needed on all levels. Here we focus on governmental development work and also the teachers and educational institutions goal of transforming learning environments. Below some examples on this development work on a governmental level (Education for sustainable development: a roadmap - UNESCO Digital Library):

“Finland is reforming the national core curricula for pre-school and basic education to support and promote sustainable development and well-being following the value basis of education, where the necessity of a sustainable way of living and eco-social understanding is emphasized. The aim is to support all students in developing the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that promote their ability to understand the importance of a sustainable future.”

In Greece, The Ministry of Education established 46 Centres for Environmental Education and Sustainability under the Regional Directorates of Education all over the country. The projects these centres are running aim at training teachers in order to implement projects related to ESD in their schools. During the 2011 school year, 184 seminars for 8,745 teachers of primary and secondary education took place.

In Australia, The Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative is just one example of an effort to encourage schools to take a whole-school, whole-system approach to Education for Sustainability (EfS). First piloted in 2005, this initiative successfully contributed to a growing appreciation of a whole-school approach to ESD. Among its outcomes, it demonstrated: a greater depth and breadth in EfS projects undertaken; an enhanced curriculum integration of EfS; organizational, financial and wider environmental benefits; and links with broader sustainability understandings and goals. In short, participation in the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative helped schools to develop a more effective and comprehensive EfS programme.”


So, those were the institutional approacher and development steps. Also on institutional and teacher level, one can consider learning environments that promote and support sustainable future:

  • ·        A learner-centred approach
  • ·        Action-oriented learning
  • ·        Transformative learning

At the beginning I mentioned my professor speed dating us researchers. Her idea was that we need multidisciplinary research in order to solve complex problems. There is also a belief that if we want to solve these big complex issues,  education should reach beyond competence development and shift the focus to generating broad-based and multiperspective thinking (Source JYU – Finnish Institution of Education Research). And this is why ecosocial and sustainability thinking should have their place in education on all levels.

 

References:

KESTO — Finnish Institute for Educational Research (jyu.fi)

Identifying the Principles of an Ecological Civilization - This View Of Life

ESD for 2030 toolbox: priority action areas (unesco.org)

THE 17 GOALS | Sustainable Development (un.org)

Education for sustainable development: a roadmap - UNESCO Digital Library

 


 

Kommentit

Lähetä kommentti

Tämän blogin suosituimmat tekstit

Kuva
  A jump into teaching! This week, we had our first teaching session. Competence goals for this session were that we understand the meaning of learning in higher education and also understand how interaction affects learning. Wednesday’s webinar focused on pedagogical planning and group teaching sessions had been divided into four topics: 1: How do the official documents and regulations affect the planning of the teaching in your vocational field? Where can you find all this information?   2: What are the theories of learning and how do they affect the planning of the teaching in your particular field and in competence-based education? Choose at least one learning theory that you use in your teaching task!     3: How does student centered approach, personalization and competence-based system affect the planning?  Can you imagine different scenarios?   4: What is a pedagogical script? How can that help you promote learning in a classroom, on the job learning and virtual settin
Lue lisää
Kuva
  Pedagogy, teaching methods and guidance supporting student’s learning process   This week’s webinar focused on implementation.  The main aim of the session was to understand the importance of diversifying teaching and learning in higher education pedagogy. We certainly got a good dose of information on different pedagogical models, teaching methods and their use in the learning process. We also considered individual learning needs and personalized study paths and how this impacts our planning work. We also learnt about student guidance and common guidance practices.   My team had a great topic of collaboral learning methods, team dynamics and team working skills.   W e had obviously all got our first taste in collaborative learning here at OAMK’s studies but it was interesting to take a look at the theory behind collaborative learning.   Collaboral learning and theory behind it   We introduced the students to Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. Vygotsky sees learni
Lue lisää
Kuva
  Photo: Armando Are (Pexels) 19.10. 2022 Reflection, review and peer feedback   Competence goal    4.  You understand the meaning of assessment and feedback in higher education pedagogy.   A ssessment criteria:   4a) You consider the roles and objectives of assessment and feedback in the learning process.  4b) You use examples to examine different evaluation methods and ways to assess. 4c) You use your own experience, scientific literature or other reliable sources of information in your reflection.  Assessment According to Hyppönen & Linden, one of the most important aspects of the assessment of learning is its effect on the guiding of studying. Good assessment encourages the students towards studying that enables a deep approach to learning. As a contrast, bad assessment guides the students to doing things that are insignificant for their learning and development of skills. Role of feedback In the Teachers’ Handbook, Hyppönen & Linden argue that “Feedback
Lue lisää