Abstract
The need to develop student sustainability competencies has long been addressed internationally with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes both education and CS (Shulla et al., 2020). Three overall focus points for the sustainable transition of education have been defined in UNESCO’s new agenda ‘ESD for 2030’: transformative action, structural change, and technological futures (Teo & Triantafyllou, 2020). GreenEdTech addresses all three challenges by focusing the project’s research and development efforts on developing models and assessment tools for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) transformation of education and building a learning platform for assisting ESD education.
In this paper, we focus on the role of communities from a socio-cultural perspective (Ballard, Dixon & Harris, 2017) and the range of different possible ways professional communities can be involved in CCS with schools to enhance education for sustainable development (ESD). The current paper is part of a larger national research project titled ‘GreenEdTech: Green Transition of Education and educational TECHnology’. Over a period of four years the project will construct educational models and a digital learning space with the goal of implementing ESD into STEAM subjects in upper secondary school education in Denmark.
In Denmark and internationally, there has been a strong focus in recent years on identifying and defining sustainability competencies (Breiting & Wickenberg, 2010). The defined competencies and pedagogical approaches include action competencies (Jensen & K. Schnack, 2006), and competencies in systems-thinking (thinking across disciplines and sectors), value thinking (thinking in values of different actors and future developments), future-thinking (thinking in and imagining future scenarios of sustainable development, implementation, strategic-thinking, collaboration, and integrated problem solving (Brundiers et al. 2021). Despite sustainability competencies being defined internationally, research stresses that ESD is often not well rooted in the existing school system (Breiting & Wickenberg, 2010; Scott & Gough, 2003). It is therefore stressed as crucial to take teachers’ perspective and their everyday teaching practice into consideration when aiming at improving sustainability education in schools (Lotz-Sisitka, 2017).
The project GreenEdTech, described in this paper, has the focus of integrating ESD into the Danish school system through a CCS approach. Students and teachers collaborate with professional green actors from green industries, public organisations and NGO’s in solving authentic sustainability problems as part of sustainability education in elementary school grade 7th – 10th. The collaboration takes place both physically and via the GreenEdTech digital learning space developed to support Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and collaboration with CCS partners.
The GreenEdTech digital learning space has been developed by a consortium consisting of partners from educational research, IT development and industry and is tested in 15 schools around Denmark. The paper presents how development has followed a design-based research methodology with three iterations and what the design results are from the different iterations. Iteration one was conducted as an open pen and paper test with focus on developing structures for collaboration between students and CCS partners such as green industries. The design results from these tests were that it is motivating for students to work with authentic cases and collaborate with challenges from professionals outside school. It was however difficult for both teachers and students to work with ESD competences as processes such as system thinking and future thinking are new approaches in Danish schools. In the second iteration focus was therefore on developing frameworks for system thinking and future thinking in the CCS collaboration process. The paper presents the design and describes the first results from the two DBR iterations.
In this paper, we focus on the role of communities from a socio-cultural perspective (Ballard, Dixon & Harris, 2017) and the range of different possible ways professional communities can be involved in CCS with schools to enhance education for sustainable development (ESD). The current paper is part of a larger national research project titled ‘GreenEdTech: Green Transition of Education and educational TECHnology’. Over a period of four years the project will construct educational models and a digital learning space with the goal of implementing ESD into STEAM subjects in upper secondary school education in Denmark.
In Denmark and internationally, there has been a strong focus in recent years on identifying and defining sustainability competencies (Breiting & Wickenberg, 2010). The defined competencies and pedagogical approaches include action competencies (Jensen & K. Schnack, 2006), and competencies in systems-thinking (thinking across disciplines and sectors), value thinking (thinking in values of different actors and future developments), future-thinking (thinking in and imagining future scenarios of sustainable development, implementation, strategic-thinking, collaboration, and integrated problem solving (Brundiers et al. 2021). Despite sustainability competencies being defined internationally, research stresses that ESD is often not well rooted in the existing school system (Breiting & Wickenberg, 2010; Scott & Gough, 2003). It is therefore stressed as crucial to take teachers’ perspective and their everyday teaching practice into consideration when aiming at improving sustainability education in schools (Lotz-Sisitka, 2017).
The project GreenEdTech, described in this paper, has the focus of integrating ESD into the Danish school system through a CCS approach. Students and teachers collaborate with professional green actors from green industries, public organisations and NGO’s in solving authentic sustainability problems as part of sustainability education in elementary school grade 7th – 10th. The collaboration takes place both physically and via the GreenEdTech digital learning space developed to support Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and collaboration with CCS partners.
The GreenEdTech digital learning space has been developed by a consortium consisting of partners from educational research, IT development and industry and is tested in 15 schools around Denmark. The paper presents how development has followed a design-based research methodology with three iterations and what the design results are from the different iterations. Iteration one was conducted as an open pen and paper test with focus on developing structures for collaboration between students and CCS partners such as green industries. The design results from these tests were that it is motivating for students to work with authentic cases and collaborate with challenges from professionals outside school. It was however difficult for both teachers and students to work with ESD competences as processes such as system thinking and future thinking are new approaches in Danish schools. In the second iteration focus was therefore on developing frameworks for system thinking and future thinking in the CCS collaboration process. The paper presents the design and describes the first results from the two DBR iterations.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Titel | International Conference of the Learning Sciences |
| Publikationsdato | 2024 |
| Status | Udgivet - 2024 |