Water education in schools often boils down to a rather simplistic set of activities like “turn off the tap while you brush your teeth” campaigns, aimed at raising awareness about the value and scarcity of water. Yet, the complex sustainability issues behind these concerns are often neglected, or simply unknown by school teachers in their efforts to tackle water education.
Understanding sustainability entails developing skills like systemic thinking and cooperative work, which need to be scaffolded since early childhood throughout life by means of interdisciplinary, project-based learning. However, schools systems all over the world face several structural challenges to implement pedagogical practices that engage students and teachers in deeply meaningful, transformative experiences towards sustainability.
In the current global context of acknowledged environmental hazards of pressing importance, Education plays a key role in fostering sustainability. Yet educational systems may need to adjust their practices to embrace the full potential that Education for Sustainability offers. Content-laden encyclopedic teaching, subject-based curriculum designs and top-down school management approaches can be replaced by student-centered learning, interdisciplinary project-based curriculums and distributed leadership management schemes.
Thus, when a school dives into a wholistic approach towards sustainability, other forms of improvement of its teaching and management practices come in the wake, and bring forth paradigm shifts that make the school a scalable model for sustainable communities.
This online course offers an overview of the key sustainability concepts that may frame water education in schools more meaningfully, as well as a glimpse at a few successful models and tools from different scenarios.
There is no course fee. Sponsored by a partnership of international development organisations, the course is free.
Interested participants must apply for this course before Friday, August 17th, 2018.
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