Strategies for change towards sustainability in tertiary education supported by I CTs: From theory to praxis Vassilios Makrakis Professor of I CT in Education UNESCO Chair I CT in ESD (www.edc.uoc.gr/ unescochair) RCE Crete Dept. of Primary Education, University of Crete, Greece 1
In my presentation I will: •Address how ICT can support effective, sustainable learning and give some prerequisites and general conditions that have to be met in order to carry out effective ICT-enabled ESD. •Give some examples of how the UNESCO Chair ICT in ESD has been involved in the area of sustainability. 2
Setting the stage At the turn of the millennium, humanity finds itself in a global economic, ecological, social and political crisis. This crisis is largely based on the following causative and self- reinforcing processes: 1. Unsustainable modes of production and consumption 2. Arms races and unsustainable techno-culture 3. Growing gaps of social, economic and political inequality 4. Homogenizing the world through globalization 3
Whose fault? • Education systems, at all levels, and especially Higher Education institutions bear their own responsibility for this crisis, as they have educated a leadership and larger parts of the population whose decision-making power and broader behaviour, through omission and commission, fuelled those processes causative to the crisis. 4
What roles for Higher Education? The answer to this question depends on whether we see: Education as an agent of reproduction of status quo and peripheral reform OR Education as an agent of social transformation and radical reform 5
Points of departure My thesis is that if we want to tackle the global crisis through education, we should consider the role of education as it is depicted in the second option. In this paper, I will concentrate on the role of Higher Education and the need for reorienting teacher education curricula to address sustainable development, supported by ICTs. 6
Why are I CTs important to ESD? Facilitate partnerships and enable collaboration of all stakeholders Can provide interactive mind/cognitive tools Can offer opportunities to communicate, construct and share knowledge Provide a means for overcoming barriers concerned with time and space Provide opportunities for meaningful learning Provide learners with opportunities for building intercultural dialogue Support local/global connectivity Can motivate people to developing sustainable thinking and practices, acting in this way as “green forces” (e.g., reduce the need for travelling, replaced by virtual communication, reduce paper use). 7
Why is ESD important for I CTs? ESD themes integrated into the school curricula could provide a worthwhile context for ICTs in education. For example, social, economic and environmental issues can provide meaningful and challenging contexts for developing a wide range of ICT skills. ESD methods are conducive with constructivist and transformative learning theories, which can provide a context and rationale for using ICT-based learning tools such as concept mapping, modelling, social networking. 8
St r t rat e t egic point s t s for act i t ion Capacity building on I CT-enabled ESD based on blended cascade type models of training which would start with the training of a number of well-motivated ICT/ESD-literated teachers to function as resources in their own school. Connect ESD capacity building to educational reform and change, giving due emphasis to the process as well as the substance of change. Such a strategy implies: 1) changes in the organizational and internal features of schools; 2) prioritize learning, then pedagogy (teaching) and curriculum and then technology; 3) merging theory and praxis as well as content and process. 9
Cont. strategies I ntroduce post-graduate courses and study programs on ICT-enabled ESD, preferably deployed on a virtual platform in order to cope with teachers’ lack of time and geographical barriers. Revise traditional teaching methods and practices. This implies that we should: avoid isolating technology as a separate discipline and instead 1. provide an instructional focus that illustrates how technology can support ESD goals and objectives; provide a non-threatening and cooperative learning 2. environment that is sensitive to the individual teacher's level of expertise and experience; and guide teachers to cross the bridge between technology’s 3. capabilities and curriculum requirements. 10
Cont. strategies Administrative support: If teachers trained to integrate sustainable development and ICT in teaching and learning is to be effective, then responsible authorities should: encourage and reward teachers who introduce innovative practices into 1. their teaching; encourage teachers to share their ESD experiences; 2. certify teachers who participate successfully in ICT-enabled ESD 3. professional development activities; give ESD innovative teachers additional access to hardware and 4. software; provide ESD innovative teachers’ schools with extra computers and 5. software; reduce administrative overloaded tasks for ESD innovative teachers to 6. take part in ICT-enabled ESD professional development. 11
Actions taken: Ongoing projects Developing web-based curricula addressing education for climate change . This project concerns the development of web-based inter/cross- disciplinary curricula addressing the inte-gration of climate change in the Greek school curriculum. Designing, developing and assessing a Euro-Mediterranean online ESD “Community of Practice” for reforming Higher Education curricula and teaching practices to address ESD. Developing an online problem-based learning environment for health education. This project deals with the development and assessment of an online problem-based learning ‘community of practice’ enriched with inter- disci-plinary ICT-based instructional lessons on issues related to health education. WikiQuESD . This concerns an action research initiative geared towards developing strategies for using digital media and technology to turn pre-service and in-service teachers able to construct Web-based instructional material addressing education for sustainability issues. 12
Reorienting university curricula to address sustainability This is a European Commission Tempus funded program, involving seven European Universities, six Universities from Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, the UNESCO Regional Office for the Arab States in Beirut and three NGOs. This process entails seven key components: 1. Develop ESD competences for HE students contextualized to the E.U. and Arab region. 2. Evaluate ESD student competences in the participating Higher Education I nstitutions. 3. Establish new models of professional development in ESD. 4. Revise education and certification requirements to include ESD and align these revisions to correspond to the ESD student competences and the Bologna process. 5. Apply and evaluate the revised education curricula with respect to the ESD student competences. 6. Bridge the gap between HEI s and society through student placements for practicum on sustainable development. 7. Promote reorienting HE towards ESD as a viable avenue for “whole institution” curriculum reform, research and teaching across all HEI s in the Arab region. 13
Developing a joint online Master Degree on I CT in ESD This is a European Commission funded project, including 7 Universities. Through this joint effort, we are making considerable innovative progress, both to improve our own Universities’ sustainability profiles and also to develop a new, open and flexible postgraduate programme that will respond to the increasing needs of experienced practitioners who want to play a key role in moving forward the issue of ESD. 14
THANKS A LOT 15
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