This MOOC is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web, and it includes validated academic content designed and produced by project members and MOOC Commission. The MOOC will be designed in a multidisciplinary collaboration between the teaching staff and the development team. This MOOC can be used and reached by any person or institution that wants to train its educators or train them on how to be eco schools and to gain teacher competencies for environmental education. We expect the MOOC to be especially useful to institutions/schools/organizations wanting to create an institutional policy of environmental education. Institutions those are willing to do will find the MOOC as a great starting point in devising their own policies in terms of environmental education. It will provide the knowledge and tools to mainstream environmental education, and be an effective change-maker for sustainable development. It will also give you facts and figures, and a better understanding of the global international frameworks related to environmental education. What will be learned?
- Climate Change and Environmental Education in the School Area.
- How to ensure young people’s voices are heard?
- How to link eco-friendly schools to eco-friendly cities and communities?
- How to become environmentally friendly educators?
- How to establish environmental education learning institutions?
- Discover what you can do to promote environmental education and eco-schools.
The course will be divided into 5 modules introducing and touching the different aspects of environmental education in the following areas:
- About the Project and Partnership Module,
- Environmental Education: Definitions and Declarations Module,
- Teacher Competencies for Improving Environmental Education at Schools Module,
- Environmental Education Examples, Programs, and Activities from Each Partner Module,
- Course Evaluation and Quiz.
With the help of this MOOC you will be able to….
- include the environmental dimension in all aspects of education at all levels;
- make teachers gain the necessary teaching competencies to implement environmental education;
- promote the ongoing education of teachers, educators, student-teachers, and those interested in environmental education on environmental matters;
- integrate regional and local authorities in the development and carrying out of environmental education;
- determine a life skills-based approach that should desire learning outcomes in each school. These goals should reflect the rights of children in the context of their community, including risk and protective factors in the environment.
- establish child-friendly schools, environmental projects inside or outside the school to engage the basic principles of child-centeredness, inclusiveness, participation, and protective environments, emphasizing child rights and equity;
- ensure the child-centered learning and teaching methodology promotes experiential and project based learning methods that are integrated into curricula;
- incorporate environmental education into the design, operation, and curriculum of the schools and institutions;
- acknowledge the need to evaluate initiatives across Europe including the extent to which environmental education goals have been met and amend those goals to ensure that they are in fact attainable;
- encourage the evaluation of the teaching of environmental education across the European Union and as part of this to develop indicators (using the Euro barometer opinion poll) of attitudes, knowledge, and behavior;
- empower young people to take a stand on environmental issues they feel strongly about and to give them a platform to articulate these issues through.