Implementing Education for Active Citizenship and Sustainability

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Educators from universities in Portugal, United Kingdom, Spain (Balearic Islands) and Finland have set up an EU project “framing European Teachers for Sustainable Development and Inter cultural Sensitivity* (TETSDAIS). The main objective is to foster professional development of European teachers in implementing and integrating the core themes in school practices to meet student needs. Theoretical concepts connected to education for sustainability were clarified and a questionnaire about environmental attitudes and values of 15-year-old students was conducted in partner countries. The conclusions have been put into action on in-service courses for teachers and outcomes disseminated via the TETSDAIS website and in reports and research papers. This article is based on data collected from teachers participating in an in-service training course in Palma. Sixteen teachers from a range of European countries were interviewed. This article highlights the main findings and suggests possible further efforts. Research and development project for European teachers CURRENTLY THE CONCEPT of sustainability is commonly used in major national and international declarations and institutional policies to serve many purposes including sustainability reports of trans-national corporations and official documents at local, national and global levels. Sustainability has acquired many meanings since it emerged from English-speaking academic circles during the 1970s. However, most people cannot come up with meaningful descriptions of sustainability and related concepts such as active citizenship and cultural diversity (Boehmer-Christiansen, 2002; Jucker, 2002; Vftight, 2002), and this seems to be often the case among educators too (Slater, 2001; Cabral, 2002). This was one of the main reasons why EU Comenius project TETSDAIS Thdning European Teachers for Sustainable Development and Intercultural Sensitivity was initiated in 2001. The partners in this three-year project come from universities in Portugal, Spain (Balearic Islands), United Kingdom and Finland. Most of the academics involved are working in the field of teacher education, but national level school administration is also represented in the group. The participants share common research interests in geographical and environmental education as well as in education for sustainability (TETSDAIS, 2004). The target audience for the project are European teachers and teacher educators. The main point is how to encourage the professional development of European teachers on the themes of sustainability and intercultural sensitivity and how to integrate the theme in school curricula to meet student needs. In order to achieve these goals, initially ideas were shared and discussed in depth amongst the partners and were summed up in three phases of action. First, the theoretical concepts connected to education for sustainability were clarified. Second, a questionnaire dealing with environmental attitudes and values of 15year-old students was conducted in partner countries. Finally the conclusions of these efforts were put into action during two in-service courses for European teachers arranged by the TETSDAIS partners and disseminated via research articles, materials and news on the project’s website. Teacher training courses Two teacher in-service training courses brought together teachers from across Europe. The aim was to share experiences and develop practical skills of teachers to be able to take forward the themes of the project in schools. The intention wa actively to explore conceptions and experiences of European teachers within the theoretical framework of TETSDAIS and to This content downloaded from 207.46.13.184 on Wed, 10 Aug 2016 05:18:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms encourage them to implement themes fostering sustainable development, cultural diversity and active citizenship in their school practices. They were also encouraged to explore links and relationships between environmental thinking and development concepts and to create networks and partnerships with each other across the national borders. As was clarified in the theoretical frame of the project, the courses aimed to support professional development of teachers in secondary, upper secondary and vocational schools as well as teacher educators. In order for the course to meet these objectives, the teaching methods used were designed to follow a student centred approach, or in this case more precisely, a teacher-as-learnercentred approach (Biggs, 1999; Entwistle et al. , 2001). This means that all the classes were designed to enable the teachers to reflect on the ideas presented by the trainers. The lectures were mostly dealing with cases from real-life experiences highlighting, among other things, various practical environmental problems to be dealt with. After and between the lectures the teachers were encouraged to discuss and share their ideas about the case studies and the theoretical applications presented by the trainers. For example, the findings of the TETSDAIS youth survey (Ferreira et al, 2003; Kaivola and Cabral, 2003) were examined in the light of the concepts. Also, previous research experiences of the trainers, case studies and local features and environmental problems of Mallorca were used for further reflection and application of education for sustainability.Â