Teacher Academies Project

The Challenge we faced…

In today’s rapidly evolving world, education for sustainability has never been more critical. Increasingly, educators are tasked with engaging children and young people with some of the most complex challenges ever faced by humanity and to be part of transforming education itself. But how do we move beyond traditional approaches to teaching and learning that empowers the critical thinkers and ethical problem solvers the world needs today? How can educators effectively foster competences and values needed for a fair and sustainable future?

What we did…

Over the past three years, Teacher Academy Project-Teaching Sustainability has brought together an interdisciplinary community of primary and secondary level educators from across Europe to learn and develop resources for sustainability education through four online workshops, four hybrid active learning events and three face-to-face summer schools.

The resources and materials we made…

Our LTPs Compendium and Educator’s Resource Book aims to collect the experiences of the co-design process, in which participating (pre-and in-service) teachers were experts in the field providing feedback on the materials. It also provides guidance on how to adapt and use the resources, at the same time offering a rich and multifaceted explanation of methodologies and pedagogical frameworks that underpin the core part of the TAP-TS teaching and learning experiences captured in Learning and Teaching Packages.

What is exciting about these…

The TAP-TS Learning and Teaching Packages (what we call our LTPs) are essentially self-contained Learning and Teaching Programmes that include sets of open and flexible learning & teacher materials, co-developed and validated by the TAP-TS Partnership. These have two main uses: Firstly, the LTPs are designed and resourced as formalised modules that can be taken and freely adopted / adapted byteacher education institutions across the European Union. 

Secondly, they include materials and resources for teachers to directly implement in their classrooms, with the option to modify and/or repurpose as they see fit. The core purpose of the LTPs is to motivate, build confidence, and provide teacher educators, teachers, and student teachers with high-quality, materials, ideas, and other practical support on educating for a greener, more sustainable Europe. These materials have formed the foundations for the TAP-TS Academy activity over the life of the project.

The LTPs Compendium represents a valuable resource for educators that offers a rich collection and description of LTPs, underpinning methodologies, pedagogical frameworks, and design processes that empower and inspire educators to make sustainability a core part of teaching and learning.

How it is organised…

The LTPs Compendium is organized in four main parts. Sections 1 and 2 present key design principles of TAP-TS materials rooted in participatory and transformative education, and describe a roadmap for designing teaching and learning materials and integrating sustainability into diverse learning environments.

Section 3 attends to key pedagogical principles and approaches put at the core of LTPs, and provides a description of the model and framework for reflection for professional learning. This framework puts emphasis on working with experiences grounded in well-informed beliefs and expectations, and on critical discussions and reflective co-design of pedagogical experiences that are essential fortransformative education.

Section 4 presents the Learning and Teaching Packages in a sketched way, also explaining their structure and objectives.

Sections 5 to 7 describe the validation process and approach to evaluation of the LTPs, as well as give some examples of their use by in-service teachers in their contexts. Reflections as Lessons Learnt and recommendations at policy, institutional and professional levels are suggested based on the experiences from collaborative work on LTPs between teacher education institutions, professional development institutions, secondary and primary schools, civic organisations and with school teachers and student teachers.

In summary…

We hope that the TAP-TS LTPs and the accompanying Compendium and Educators’ Resource Book will inspire many of you to get involved with teaching sustainability.

Link to the LTPs Compendium and Educators’ ResourceBook. 

Picture Credit: the Earth by Susanne, 5 y.o.