Invitation for Principals and School Developers
Free conference in Gothenburg (or online) on March 23, 2023!
We offer a full day of idea exchanges, mingling and inspiration for developing your school to become more democratic and inclusive with a focus on sustainable development.
Coffee and lunch included.
Program in Swedish
Program in English
Evaluation form
At the conference, among others, you will meet:
During the conference, the results of the Erasmus+ project, Education for Resilience and Sustainability, will be presented. The conference language will be English.The project includes teachers, principals, researchers and student teachers from four countries. Reflections will be presented on important elements for creating schools for sustainable development and involving students, teachers, researchers to work towards increasing competences for agency. Professor Arjen Wals and professor Leif Östman provide the framework for the presentations and panel discussions to be held between various actors regarding school development and teaching and learning for sustainability.
About the speakers:
Arjen Wals: Professor of Transformative Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at the University of Wageningen, Netherlands, and UNESCO Chair for Social Learning for Sustainability. He is also an honorary doctorate at the University of Gothenburg.
Margaretha Häggström: PhD in Educational Practice at the University of Gothenburg. Leader of the research work during the project. She will present important elements needed at school for teaching and learning for sustainable development.
Leif Östman: Professor of Didactics at Uppsala University. He has helped develop research on education for sustainable development in Sweden and Europe and leads an international network-based research environment in didactics.
Eva Marsh: Principal at Backatorpsskolen, Sweden. With her teachers, she will present her school’s professional development work. The teachers will present their core curriculum and thematic/interdiciplnary work for sustainable development.
Ann-Catherine Henriksson: PhD in Education Psychology , The Center for Lifelong Learning, Åbo Akademi, Finland. She will present on evaluation and assessment in interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
Virginia (Gini) Lockhart-Pedersen, Assistant professor at The Norwegian National Centre for English and Foreign Languages/Østfold University College. She will present reflections on teachers' professional development through interdisciplinary work and sustainable development
Time and location: Conference Center, Wallenberg, Medicinaregatan 20A, Gothenburg / online. Thursday 23 March 2023 8.30-16.00
Registration: https://forms.gle/TcTf198nsoLfkHuu9 State the name and function for each participant. Include any special diet.
The number of places is limited: Applications that include a principal + one or two pre-service teachers/development leaders are prioritized.
The diffusion conference is financed by Erasmus+, which compensates with an amount per participant, making the conference free of charge. Coffee and lunch included. Registered but absent participants will be invoiced SEK 500.
For Swedish participants, there will be time for information from the University Council for those who want to discuss how they themselves can apply for project funds.
We look forward to seeing you in March!
/Eva Marsh rektor Backatorpsskolan
Coordinator, Erasmus +, Education for resilience and sustainability
Event Description
This project is based on a holistic approach to issues related to sustainability. The project integrates environmental, social and economic issues into teaching, involving children and young people in the learning process, and preparing them for the future. Our point of departure - a holistic view on education, includes a critical place-based pedagogy that uses the community and their resources as a foundation, emphasising interdisciplinary teaching and learning and promoting a democratic empowering educational setting. The aim with such a setting is to provide students with a sense of agency, and to recognise them as producers of their own knowledge. The overall aim with this event is increased dissemination of knowledge on how to teach and learn about sustainability.
The event and associated deliberations aim at improving the understanding of the array of activities within the project as a whole, and the range of strategies that underpin these educational activities, in relation to the Storyline approach as well as to issues of sustainability. The event will also stimulate and facilitate long-lasting communication and collaboration between teachers, teacher educators, researchers and other organisations, in our effort to support further work with developing education for sustainability. Specifically, this event will most likely result in: Greater understanding of how to improve monitoring education that includes sustainability issues.
Enhanced knowledge for implementation of sustainable development and resilience for pedagogical planning and practice Increased dialogue and communication space for pedagogical practice and research Enhanced support for rethinking education for sustainable development in schools Knowledge of how to further improve the link between the Storyline approach with issues of sustainability, and student-centred education. To analyse the main opportunities and challenges for the different means of implementation to advance the Storyline approach in relation to sustainable development Key information and follow-up products that will be produced and disseminated during and after the event will comprise the following:
The participants in the multiplier events will be organisations and school boards that can be interested in the findings made by the project. The intention is to spread the results, such as guiding templates, mentoring booklets, instructive video films, and research results in the form of academic articles, from the project. That is to share our resource bank, created during the project. The resource bank will contain research articles, research podcasts, filmed lectures, teachers planning and Storyline templates, inspirational films etc. In the final year of the project we will employ an organisation that can curate and further develop the resource bank. A long-term effect will be to strengthen organisations' collaboration and networks both locally and internationally.
This dissemination conference will be organised as a one-day conference. We will combine lectures, seminars and workshops. The aim is to find new ways of developing Storyline as a method to reach learning for sustainable development. The project includes researchers from three different universities and countries, to study classes of pupils working with the new Storyline templates, to examine the activities and the teaching and learning outcomes, which will give the researchers the opportunity to discuss their findings with students, teachers and amongst themselves. This is a way to produce new knowledge of educational processes. The findings will be presented and thus shared with experts on the Storyline method, and then shared on a website.
The process, findings and results will be presented and shared during the dissemination conference in Stockholm, through workshops and seminars. The result from the internship-related research can be used in can be used in pedagogical discussions within teacher education, teacher in-service education and school development and be useful in all developing future oriented curricula. In the long term, innovative practices could have a positive impact on human behavioural changes for individual preferences, consumption habits, and lifestyles, the basis of much of life on Earth.
