A Rounder Sense of Purpose (RSP) is a three-year, EU-funded project that sets out to develop an accredited framework of educator competences in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). This is being tested through bespoke educator training programmes in six countries (Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands and England).
The starting point for this work is the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe framework of educator competences for ESD (UNECE 2012), which itself draws upon earlier international work. The UNECE framework remains a largely theoretical tool that does not link its 39 competences to specific learning outcomes.
During 2016 RSP partners worked on distilling the UNECE competences, which included reducing the number to twelve, removing repetition and identifying gaps. This year project partners are developing and delivering training programmes to approximately 400 pre-service and in-service educators as well as conducting mixed methods research into the impact of engagement with this competence framework. A key issue for project partners will be to develop appropriate assessment tools and techniques for measuring these competences.
This paper provides the background to the project, including the various ESD competence models that have been considered in the process. It then presents the outputs of the RSP project, principally the competence framework, and a discussion of the early findings of our research on impact.
Reference:
UNECE (2012) Learning for the future: Competences in Education for Sustainable Development. Geneva: UNECE
