This is the title of a paper that Paul Vare and I have written for the Teachers: Agents of Change project, funded by the EU, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, and the Czech Development Agency.
This project aims to strengthen competence of pre-graduate and in-service teachers in the Czech Republic and Poland through the introduction of courses in development education at universities so that teachers can effectively integrate development education into their teaching in accordance with the new core curricula. One of the activities of the project is to create a collection of articles on development topics to help teachers gain a greater understanding of the issues.
The article begins ...
The origins of ESD (education for sustainable development) lie in environmental education and development education / global learning. ESD brings together a wide variety of educational strategies which examine how living things relate to each other and depend on the biosphere, and on how quality of life is increasingly imperilled by how we now live. It focuses on the increasing degradation of the global natural environment, and on the widespread lack of social justice and human fulfilment across the world. These are inter-related issues and must be addressed together if students are to understand them. In summary, then, ESD addresses this dilemma: How can we all live well, without compromising the planet’s ability to enable us all to live well? This links people’s lives, the economic and political systems these are embedded in, and the continuing supply of goods and services from the biosphere that underpin and drive such systems. Teachers across many subjects find much of value here, and students clearly find ESD interesting, motivating, and helpful – largely because they can see its relevance to the world and to their future lives.
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Citation:
Vare P & Scott W (2014) What is ESD? And why is it important to your students? Teachers: Agents of Change project, funded by the European Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, and the Czech Development Agency http://www.varianty.cz/indexen.php?id=74
Responses
Good to see good quality writing on ESD emanating from the UK arriving in Central Europe where English is increasingly understood. The question posed gets right to the heart of our current rush to accelerate the sixth great extinction of species including our own.