ESD Workshop - EdLab - Creative experimentation for teaching and learning in Higher Education

Education for Sustainable Development

Have you heard about Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and want to know more? Are you looking for ways to integrate ESD within your curriculum?

This is the first of two workshops about how to build Education for Sustainable Development into your teaching. In the workshop we will be explaining our approach to ESD and there will be the opportunity to try out activities to develop ESD competencies.

Dates: Workshop 1 – Tuesday 19th November 2024, Workshop 2 – Spring term, date TBC

Time: 10am to 4pm

Location: Teaching and Learning Centre, Durham University

Facilitators: Mark Childs, Eleni Akrida, Eirini Tzouma, Martina Diehl and Helen Cramman

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is often looked at as addressing climate change and other environmental issues. As such, its integration in many disciplines isn’t always apparent. Our approach is to apply the broader definitions of sustainability as outlined in UNESCO’s sustainable development goals and the competencies required to attain them. We have adopted the competency framework developed by Brundiers et al (2021; 23) and used this to inform the workshops, which will alternate between exploring the competencies (systems thinking, values thinking, implementation and futures thinking competencies) and identifying how these could be brought into your own curriculum.

We will begin the day looking at how these competencies could map to graduate attributes (so attendees can meet two strategies at once) and hear from the experience of an academic who has integrated ESD competencies into their computer science programme. We will end the day creating individual plans to develop an ESD strand in your own teaching, with the intention of reconvening in 2025 to see how everyone got on.

Any questions, or suggestions, please contact Mark Childs mark.childs@durham.ac.uk

References / Suggested reading

Brundiers, K., Barth, M., Cebrián, G. et al (2021) Key competencies in sustainability in higher education—toward an agreed-upon reference framework. Sustain Sci 16, 13–29 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00838-2