From January the 20th to January the 24th, the Earth Charter Center on Education for Sustainable Development hosted the second edition of the course “Education and Values for Sustainable Development: Teaching what really matters” taught by Dr. Sam Crowell and Mirian Vilela, Executive Director of the Earth Charter International Secretariat.
14 participants came from around the world to Costa Rica to share their experiences and learn about the concept of sustainable development and its implications for education, learning, and change. They were educators, senior activists, young entrepreneurs, leaders, students who came to understand the role of education in fostering a culture of sustainability. Several of them were already familiar with the Earth Charter, and the course helped them deepen their understandings and explore the role of the Earth Charter as a practical tool for introducing sustainability values with a holistic and integrative approach to schools and classrooms.
The highlight of the course was experiencing first-hand the transformative learning approach that the participants would like to see in their own classrooms. The course included a field trip to a local experimental school where the participants discovered what teachers can achieve when following a sustainability vision. More generally, the participants learned about the importance and influence of the classroom context in any learning experience, about the necessity of creativity and care, and about the necessity of having a systematic approach and a vision of interconnectedness to lead people toward sustainability. It was both and learning and a self-reflection experience for all the participants and everyone came away with many new ideas and pedagogical tools to augment their sustainability teaching. Here are some words of the participants:
Here are all the course participants and facilitators posing in front of the new mosaic mural at the Earth Charter Center of ESD.
For more information, please visit the course page.
