Education for Social change: ETUCE launches its first-ever project on sustainable environmental development
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Climate emergency requires a drastic social change, including individual and collective changes in our mentality, behaviour, and lifestyle and education is a crucial tool for ensuring sustainable development of environment. Following the demand of ETUCE member organisations to support their work on sustainable development and its link to employment issues in the education sector, ETUCE has launched its first-ever project on the “Education for Social Change: The role of Education Trade Unions in addressing sustainable environmental development” which aims to build the capacity of education trade unions to prepare their affiliates to address environmental questions and climate emergency for sustainable development in education and training through social dialogue and collective bargaining with the view to address the impact that climate emergency and environmental sustainability measures have on the education sector in the European region.
The climate emergency and environmental issues are key priorities to shape sustainable economics and societies in Europe. In this context, education is crucial to create responsible and critically thinking citizens about sustainable development, as well as with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to address the climate emergency and other environmental issues. However, teachers, academics and other education personnel need to be supported in delivering education on climate emergency and sustainable environmental development with relevant and up-to-date teaching materials and tools, methods and practices, as well as with initial and continuous teacher training on the topic.
With this two-year project (2021-2023), co-funded by the European Commission, ETUCE gets off the ground for a more central role of education trade unions in implementing the European Green Deal and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Fostering the topic of education on sustainable environmental development within the Social Dialogue in Education, the project seeks to ensure a coherent and robust integration of learning about sustainable approaches to the environment in education policies and to promote concrete trade union measures and practices in addressing the environmental issues and sustainable development in education and in addressing in social dialogue and collective bargaining at all levels the impact of environmental problems on education institutions and teachers, academics, and other education personnel.
In the first meeting of the project’s Advisory Group, on 25 February, the education trade union experts from Slovenia (ESTUS), Italy (FLC-CGIL), Belgium (ACOD--Onderwijs), and Denmark (DLF), set the priorities of the 2-year work and discussed the key considerations for the survey for ETUCE member organisations. Through a multi-level approach, the survey will gather information on environmental issues in the education sector, including teachers’ training and continuous professional development, the mainstream of environment within national curricula and the promotion of role-models within education, as well as the sustainable school infrastructures.
A 2-day online Conference, on 22-23 April 2021, kicks-off the project and offers education trade unions the opportunity to discuss current practices and policies related to addressing the environmental issues and sustainable development in the education system and within education trade unions. The Conference also informs the research and all project activities on priority areas to address as regards to environmental awareness, education on climate emergency and sustainable environmental development, the impact of climate emergency on the education sector, professional development and support on these topics for teachers, academics, and other education personnel, and addressing sustainable environmental development in internal policies of education trade unions. Other activities in the framework of the project include two training workshops and a final closing Conference where practical guidelines for trade unions on addressing environmental issues and sustainable environmental development in the education sector are to be produced. In addition, a short film documentary collects the good practices of education institutions in various national contexts on addressing environmental issues and sustainable environmental development in education.