Teacher Academies Project

From June 3–5, 2025, the Erasmus+ TAP-TS (Teacher Academy Project – Teaching Sustainability) came to a close with a final project meeting and a teacher educator multiplier event in Dresden. Hosted by TU Dresden, the events brought together 15 project team members representing 11 partner institutions from 7 European countries, along with 15 invited experts in sustainability-focused teacher education from across Europe.

Over the three days, participants reflected on the outcomes of the project and explored ways to sustain its impact. A key highlight was the presentation of the final evaluation report, conducted by K&R Education (Sweden). The evaluation confirmed that TAP-TS made a significant and lasting impact on educators, students, and institutions. Teachers reported transformative changes to their classroom practices, including more interdisciplinary and outdoor learning, increased collaboration, and the integration of the GreenComp framework. Students became more engaged and took greater responsibility for sustainability in their schools. School leaders initiated whole-school strategies, and teacher educators integrated project materials into both pre-service and in-service training.

During the multiplier event, participants explored all seven Learning and Teaching Packages (LTPs) through interactive sessions. These interdisciplinary resources—praised for their clarity, adaptability, and relevance—will continue to be used in teacher education and schools. The accompanying LTP Compendium offers pedagogical guidance for their implementation.

The meeting concluded with the 20-year celebration of the TU Dresden ZLSB, a fitting backdrop for a project dedicated to educational transformation.

Importantly, TAP-TS does not end here. Many partners expressed strong intentions to continue working together, extend the network, and build on the project’s results through new collaborations, adaptations of materials, and integration into national contexts. The project leaves a lasting foundation for embedding sustainability in education across Europe.

“We came as project partners and left as friends”, was a comment echoed by numerous participants of the first face to face meeting of the Erasmus+ Teacher Academy Project Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS), which took place in Dresden from the 57th to 7th of October. The ‘partnership and planning’ meeting brought together representatives from 11 partner institutions, across 7 European countries, along with other invited local and international experts.

The meeting aimed to strengthen the TAP-TS partnership and move forward key organisational, conceptual and administrative aspects of the project. In sessions led by representatives of each of the 5 Work Packages, work conducted since the project launch in June 2022 was reviewed, and plans were made for the year ahead. 

A central focus of the meeting was the Online Workshops, Active Learning Events, and Summer Schools, set to start in spring 2023. These three teacher mobility formats, will engage student teachers, teacher educators and serving teachers from across Europe, in a network of sustainability educators with novel and innovative, high-quality sustainability teaching & learning resources and supporting pedagogies ‘learning teaching packages’ (LTPs) and their adaption to diverse contexts of practice. Learning outcomes and structure for the LTPS, which will be piloted, refined and disseminated through teacher engagement events, were also established. In addition, partners developed the TAP-TS vision for sustainability, education for sustainability and teacher professional learning and provided feedback on the communications and dissemination and quality assurance and evaluation plans.

“Critical friends” to the project, Prof. Leon Tikly (University of Bristol), Prof. Sofia Avgitidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Prof. Joanna Madalinska-Michalak (University of Warsaw) and Lara Leik (University of Salzburg), along with other local experts, provided important impulses from their individual and professional perspectives to strengthen the quality and impact of the project.

The following concrete details were agreed:

• Online Workshop 1, March 16-23, for secondary level educators has climate crisis resilience using serious games as a focus (LTP 2.4). 
• Active Learning Event 1, with online workshops from 11-28 April, and face to face in Santarem, Portugal May 4-6, is for primary level educators, and focuses on environmental education (LTP 2.3). 
• Active Learning Event 2, runs online from 9-26 May, with face to face in Santarem June 1st to 3rd. ALE 2 is for secondary level educators and focuses on Sustainability and Europe (LTP 2.1), and Sustainability and digitality (LTP 2.2). 
• Online Workshop 2, from 8-14th June, is for secondary educators, with a focus on sustainable entrepreneurship education (LTP 2.7). Finally, the Summer School, in Cyprus from 26-30 June, will include a broad range of LTPs, and the addition of LTP 2.6 ‘Green citizenship through a whole school approach’, and ‘dealing with climate disinformation through media literacy’ (LTP 2.5).

Detailed course information and registration will be open through the TAP-TS website from mid-January 2023.

See you soon!