Changing inside and out: two educational responses to the sustainability challenge

A recent teacher survey revealed that 70% of respondents felt ill-prepared to teach climate change. So what can be done? While the Government resists calls for necessary curriculum change, our own sector is responding.

UoG’s Education subject community has developed, with colleagues across Europe, a framework of sustainability educator competences called ‘A Rounder Sense of Purpose’. Core to this work has been an elective programme for education students, now part of our BEd programme. We will recount how moving the programme online presented unforeseen advantages both in terms of student learning and our own theoretical understanding of self-determined learning.

We compare this ‘internal’ reflection with an initiative at Worcester University which takes a citizens’ assembly approach to engage partnership schools in conversations on sustainability in teacher education. Worcester’s Educator Climate Assembly is inviting education stakeholders, from governors and senior leaders to parents and pupils, to hear from expert leads on the regional impacts of climate change on flooding, food security and biodiversity, as well as physical and mental health; following this they will be invited to have their say on teacher training in our time of climate and ecological emergency.

We aim to end the presentation with a call for your ideas/experiences.