Towards a new model of Teachers’ Professional Competence Development on Climate Change Erasmus Project

Project Title

Towards a new model of Teachers’ Professional Competence Development on Climate Change

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Environment and climate change; Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

According to UNESCO, education is a key factor of the global response to climate change because it can increase knowledge, enable informed decision-making and encourage behavioural changes for adopting sustainable lifestyles; in this regard, a teacher’s role in developing climate change awareness is crucial. The threat of climate change and the ongoing pandemic have highlighted the need for the digital transformation of education. The European Commission maintains that teachers need to develop solid digital literacy skills in both creating digital education content as well as in digital teaching methods. In climate change education, teachers face a number of barriers: some of them are related to the multidisciplinary nature of climate change or students’ misconceptions, but arguably the most important barriers stem from the lack in teacher training for developing the necessary skills when delivering instruction for climate change. The Erasmus+ project entitled “Towards a new model of Teachers’ Professional Competence Development on Climate Change” (Acronym: ClimaTePD), offers a solution to this problem: its overall goal is to help in-service secondary teachers in developing digital literacy and climate change teaching skills as means for enabling their students to build awareness about the global threat of climate change.

ClimaTePD will have a duration of 24 months and its Consortium consists of five partners: the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH, Coordinator, Greece), Universitat de Barcelona (UB, Spain), Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (SU, Bulgaria), Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen Nuernberg (ILI-FAU, Germany) and Hacettepe Universitesi (HU, Turkey). FORTH has extensive experience in EU funded projects, both as coordinator and as partner, and holds a broad expertise in various areas of educational methodologies and social innovation, with a particular focus on the dimension of school education and ICT as a tool for enhancing learning practices. SU, UB and HU have strong pedagogical backgrounds and expertise in teachers’ training focussing on STEMM oriented inquiry-based learning (IBL) and technology-enhanced learning (TEL). ILI-FAU has extensive experience in promoting innovation in digital learning environments and pedagogical approaches such as IBL, problem-based learning (PBL) and game-based learning (GBL) in all educational levels.

ClimaTePD aims at: (1) the creation of an open access online platform for in-service teachers’ training; (2) the development of a Guideline Handbook for teachers’ good practices on climate change education; (3) the development of a digital repository on climate change education consisting of digital scenarios and other educational activities and resources and; (4) the development of a set of policy proposals related to policy and curricula design.

The project will be divided into 4 phases: (1) Preparation: investigating, analysing and mapping the state of affairs regarding the dimensions of climate change education and digital skills into secondary teachers professional development schemes (TPD); (2) Development: developing the project’s learning material in the context of secondary teachers’ training activities via IBL and gamification principles for their TPD on climate change education and digital teaching methods; (3) Deployment and Evaluation: implementation and the evaluation of the project’s training activities for climate change education and digital skills via IBL and gamification, with the participation of 250 in-service teachers; (4) Exploitation and Dissemination: organisation of events in each one of the consortium countries in order to facilitate the visibility of the project and the circulation of the project outcomes.
ClimaTePD foresees to have an impact on the design of educational policies, Teachers Professional Development schemes and curricula in secondary education. More specifically, ClimaTePD is expected to improve the effectiveness of teaching approaches and methods for climate change in secondary education at both local and national levels. At the EU level, the project is aligned with key priorities of the ERASMUS+ programme, including environmental and climate goals and as such it has the potential to contribute to wider targets such as to strengthen the profiles of the teaching professions by propagating technology enhanced inquiry learning for teachers’ competence development on the dimension of climate change, and to provide more strategic and integrated use of ICTs and open and distance learning in education.

Project Website

https://www.climatepd.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 265581 Eur

Project Coordinator

IDRYMA TECHNOLOGIAS KAI EREVNAS & Country: EL

Project Partners

• SOFIA UNIVERSITY ST KLIMENT OHRIDSKI
• UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA
• FRIEDRICH-ALEXANDER-UNIVERSITÄT ERLANGEN-NÜRNBERG
• HACETTEPE UNIVERSITESI