“EUSTEPs Educators teaching module: sustainability around us: from theory to practice...and back”

This module, developed by the ERASMUS+ project EUSTEPs (Enhancing Universities’ Sustainability TEaching and Practices), uses a “learning-by-doing” approach to equip EU university students with science-based knowledge, multidisciplinary skills, and the transdisciplinary mindset needed to play a critical role in our societal effort towards sustainability, thus allowing students to be best prepared for the future labour market. The module is made highly effective by the adoption of the concept of Ecological Footprint (EF), a well-known and widespread quantitative approach to study, assess and understand sustainability concept. The EF is an ecology-based environmental accounting method, but we propose it not as a technical tool but as a medium to transfer important aspects of sustainability from a wide range of teachers to a wide range of students. This is possible by virtue of the verified ability of the EF method and related accessories to communicate, inform, visualize, and represent sustainability in its variegated forms. The module embraces a hands-on, experiential approach to sustainability teaching: by presenting sustainability within the context of everyday life rather than through a mere abstract teaching of intangible theories and concepts, the goal of the module is to allow students to understand, realize, and learn the full complexity of the economy-society-environment relationships, and help them grasp how sustainability relates to the whole spectrum of daily life. A series of universal, community and environmental education pedagogical approaches (PA) are employed in this module for the development of sustainability competencies. More specifically, seven out of the ten literature suggested education for sustainable development (ESD) pedagogical approaches are commissioned in this EUSTEPs teaching module, including the universal PAs of Case studies, Interdisciplinary team teaching/planning, Lecturing, Concept maps, Project or problem based learning, along with the community PA of Participatory Action Research, and the environmental education PA of Place-based environmental education.

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/13114

Citation

Malandrakis, G., Pulselli, F.M., Galli, A., Moreno Pires, S., Bacelar-Nicolau, P., Caeiro, S., Nicolau, M., Papadopoulou, A., Mapar. M., Patrizi, N., Niccolucci V. Theodosiou, N., Zachos, D. (2021). “EUSTEPs Educators teaching module: Sustainability around us: From theory to practice...and back”. ERASMUS+, KA203 2019-2022, Agreement No. 2019-1-ELO1-KA203-062941.