Framework for education for sustainability: enhancing competences in education

Résumé En

The project ‘Schools Educating for Sustainability: Proposals for and from in- service teacher education’ aims to contribute to teacher education for sustainability (EduS) in different European countries, to reach the EU level goals for a more sustainable society (European Commission, 2019). The project’s goal is to develop new initiatives addressing teachers’ and teacher educators’ professional learning – promoting innovation and social inclusion through the exchange of experience and know-how in an open education format. It thus aims to contribute to sustainability and to produce EduS guidelines, as well as to make said guidelines understandable, for teachers in each partner country. Educators will be supported through project actions that focus on promoting more inclusive and equitable educational practices for sustainable education and improving expertise around the versatile use of technology in teaching and learning— along with promoting development that more effectively preserves the environment. To achieve its previous objectives, the TEDS project included a phase (IO), in which a framework was co-constructed for EduS purposes. Researchers and teachers systematized and organized knowledge from different fields in education to develop this framework for the sharing, discussion, and reformulation of documents and materials on EduS in European schools. Their main goal was to make available and understandable a framework of reference around education for sustainability (EduS) – through the analysis and systematization (review) of research literature and by benchmarking national level strategies in various EU member states. The creation of the framework was based on the existing scholarly literature on education for sustainability. This literature was used to provide a theoretical foundation and to characterize the state of the art of EduS. Sustainability competencies are an important conceptualization within the EduS literature (UNESCO, 2017). We adhere to Wiek, Withycombe, and Redman’s (2011) definition of sustainability competencies as the following: systems-thinking competency, anticipatory competency, strategic competency, normative competency, and interpersonal competency. The EduS framework must acknowledge the different educational contexts and school systems of each country in Europe – providing a literature review, practical activities, and design principles that are more adjusted to each country’s specific scenario. The framework presented herein is based on academic work carried out in several European countries: Portugal (Universidade de Aveiro), Malta (Universita ta Malta), Lithuania (Vytauto Didziojo Universitas), France (Universite de Nantes), and Finland (University of Helsinki/Helsingin yliopisto).