Zambia, Lesotho and South Africa take SST up a notch

The Sustainability Starts with Teachers (SST), is bringing together Teacher and TVET educators for an intensive regional course, following successful in-country workshops in the three countries. The course will be hosted virtually by the Environmental Learning Research centre at Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 for a twenty-day period from the 14^th of September to 13^th November 2020.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and its partners are working on fostering distance education to ensure learning never stops beyond the classroom in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The CAP-ESD programme is running in 11 countries in Southern Africa over four years. This regional course marks a significant landmark in the 2020 cycle for the three countries.

With funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), SST is responding to the major issues highlighted in the Global Education Monitoring Report (2016), which states;  

• Teacher education needs to be more adequately aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and teachers need to be supported to understand and implement Education for Sustainable Development.
• The aim is to strengthen implementation of the (SDGs) in teacher education institutions for teacher educators from Early Childhood Development, primary, secondary and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
  
  
• Special focus will be given to Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is focused towards the achievement of educational quality within a lifelong learning framework (visit sustainabilityteachers.org for more information).

The course will host over 100 participants that have been invited from various Teacher Education and TVET institutions across the three countries. The Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) experts and representatives from the region and abroad will also be invited to participate and give virtual lectures.

The Key discussion topics will include Sustainability challenges in the country, Education in Sustainable Development (ESD) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the school system, as well as the Teacher/TVET education curriculum. The Advanced Regional Training Programme is expected to deliver the following benefits for participants:

1. Develop a shared understanding of  the context for ESD in the three countries;
   
   
2. Deepen theoretical and practical knowledge to ESD change processes relevant to teacher and TVET education in Southern African Development Community (SADC);
   
   
3. An expanded understanding of the importance of transformative learning and assessment processes to support change;
   
   
4. Appreciation of available ESD resources, tools and good practices from previous capacity building efforts in the country, region and beyond;
   
   
5. Develop strategies to roll-out “change projects” in TE and TVET institutions;
   
   
6. Initiate network support to enable the key project-implementing partners to understand their respective roles and commitments, and begin the implementation processes for their projects

 

For more information on SST and the course contact: h.lotz-sisitka@ru.ac.za and c.chikunda@unesco.org