Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

The basis of ESD:SuperVision 4.0 are three key factors relating to the implementation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into school curricula, that were identified during the previous MetESD project:
1) Capacity building for teachers and educators
2) School development as a whole institution approach and
3) Policy making in the sense of a support system towards ESD in secondary schools to deliver ESD more effectively.

This results in three challenges that the ESD:SuperVision 4.0 project will tackle:
1. Capacity building – training and further training challenge
2. School development as a Whole Institution Approach – curricular challenge
3. Policy making – educational systems challenge

As part of the project, school staff and teacher trainers were trained to facilitate an ESD-based school curriculum development process to provide a specific concept for school
quality management. A differentiated political strategy for implementing ESD in schools was proposed, which considers national peculiarities on the one hand and claims validity
across Europe on the other hand.

Activities implemented:
• Training of teacher trainers and school staff on the implementation of ESD-focused school curriculum development;
• Transferring, evaluation, adaptation and development of competence-oriented methods (tool-set) for the promotion of ESD
• Implementation, reflection and review of school and curriculum development towards a WIA
• Networking within the participating regions
• Marketing – Making ESD and school development visible

The following results and products (tangible and intangible outcomes) did the ESD:SuperVision 4.0 project produce:
• (virtual) Training courses and methods for teaching sustainability issues as part of a WIA
• Co-design and development of ESD-based school curricula – adapted/aligned internationally
• Evaluation tools, performance review
• Manual of methods
• Support system for ESD and school development on a policy level
• Marketing strategy

Through the above-mentioned results and products we anticipated the following effects:
• ESD issues/topics as part of the subject curricula
• Improvement of teacher-student and teacher-teacher relationship through a WIA
• Open-source acceptance of cross-curricular school material
• Contribution towards achieving SDG 4.7 in countries

1. The project focused on identifying the needs and requests of the partners involved in terms of developing SD best practices and provided a report on the current situation of SD within their current educational contexts. This will
• pave the way to developing the SD Guides within secondary education and will result in internationalisation of the SD Guides.
• unite previously unfamiliar partners around the issue of SD to galvanise them into cooperating and extending their networks in order to extend the space for quality SD materials in education across disciplines.
• disseminate high-quality SD methods and materials through the RCE community networks and other channels. This showcase event will bring together all the partners, educational practitioners and multipliers.

2. By enacting five transnational meetings and seven showcase learning and dissemination events during the project, ESD:SuperVision 4.0 involved around 200 external and 30 internal participants. Among the external participants we hopefully generated around 200 multipliers who will be involved in promoting ESD in their respective working, policy and teaching environments.

3. In the course of these events, multiple projects and initiatives targeting SD, transformative schooling and teaching emerged and took root,

4. The SD Guides were extended and enlarged based on the UN SDGs. As part of this process a curriculum development roadmap for school development was provided.

5. The project thus created new networks and synergies between young leaders, citizens and teachers working for sustainable futures within the respective countries of participation.
It created a cohort of educational practitioners who share a common language, understanding and vision, as well as practical experience of what leadership across sectors, cultures, generations and fields can be, and who are capable of addressing adaptive challenges found at individual, organizational and societal levels in economies, cultures and political systems in a problem-based and learner-centered way.

6. The project thereby improved the quality and output of societal and political discourse and decision making through SD knowledge and communication, as well as community building and sustainable living.
The participating educational institutions integrated the professional development into their programmes. The project and the results were primarily presented at the annual conferences of the UNESCO Europe subnetwork “BBCC” and the worldwide network of UNU-RCE and other important international and European conferences.

The aim of ESD:SuperVision 4.0 was to concentrate the available resources on the major SD issues in secondary education with curricular materials to complement and the systematic adaptation and open access of the resources on SD for the educational contexts of the different partners. The access for teachers to interdisciplinary teaching materials and to illustrate their use in everyday teaching was facilitated through the realization of this project in the following, cross-cutting ways:
• Although a lot of educational resources about sustainability existed at that time, it was difficult for teachers to connect them with existing curricula as it was impossible or laborious (e.g. dead links due to a lack of centralized design of websites, copyright restrictions, etc.).
• The project brought about a set of cutting-edge, full-fledged resources to support ESD that were ready for immediate use by educational actors.
• The resulting materials fully integrated the concept of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and adapted them for use in several subjects and national contexts. The SDGs themselves were an important reference point; those were the objectives of Agenda 2030, the principal transformational Agenda for the next twelve years in Europe and the rest of the world.
• Finally, the project helped towards strengthening international cooperation in the subject area, by bringing together experienced and inexperienced project partners in the topic of ESD. This project was therefore an important step in efforts to open up education to cross-disciplinary methodologies and improve the quality of teaching at schools. This implied the implementation of ESD in school curricula as a school development measure (as a quality development and assurance measure), with the school leadership and governance taking on the role of a change agent.

The project built on work already done by SCRIPT (Luxembourg) in the previous seven years to establish a cross-sector network of institutions working in the area of ESD for Luxembourg (www.bne.lu), as well as work done at the University of Vechta and other pilot projects that could be mainstreamed through the current project. The findings of the Erasmus+ project MetESD, which was coordinated by the University of Vechta, played a vital role.