TAP-TS Partnership and Planning Meeting in Dresden

How can education for sustainable development be implemented in schools and embedded in initial teacher education and continuous professional development? This question is addressed by the EU project ‘Teacher Academy Project - Teaching Sustainability’ (TAP-TS), one of eleven European projects in the new Erasmus+ Teacher Academies funding line running from June 2022 until May 2025. Bringing together partner institutions from Austria, Ireland, Cyprus, Portugal, Belgium, Sweden and Germany, the project aims to work with a diverse community of teachers from across Europe develop, test and publish teaching and learning materials related sustainability. As the lead partner, the ZLSB is responsible for project coordination and management and as part of this role, organised a Project Planning and Partnership Meeting from 5-7 October 2022.

The meeting aimed to strengthen the TAP-TS partnership and progress organisational, conceptual and administrative aspects of the project. In sessions led by representatives of each of the 5 Work Packages, work conducted since the project launch in June 2022 was reviewed, and plans were made for the year ahead. A central focus of the meeting was the Online Workshops, Active Learning Events, and Summer Schools, set to start in spring 2023. These three teacher mobility formats will engage student teachers, teacher educators and serving teachers from across Europe, in a network of sustainability educators with novel and innovative, high-quality sustainability teaching & learning resources and supporting pedagogies ‘learning teaching packages’ (LTPs) and their adaption to diverse contexts of practice. Learning outcomes and structure for the LTPS, which will be piloted, refined and disseminated through teacher engagement events, were also established. In addition, partners developed the TAP-TS vision for sustainability, education for sustainability and teacher professional learning and provided feedback on the communications and dissemination and quality assurance and evaluation plans.

As part of the meeting, the following events were planned for 2023:

• Online Workshop 1, March 16-23, for secondary level educators has climate crisis resilience using serious games as a focus (LTP 2.4)
• Active Learning Event 1, with online workshops from 11-28 April, and face to face in Santarem, Portugal May 4-6, is for primary level educators, and focuses on environmental education (LTP 2.3)
• Active Learning Event 2, runs online from 9-26 May, with face to face in Santarém, June 1^st to 3^rd
• ALE 2 is for secondary level educators and focuses on Sustainability and Europe (LTP 2.1), and Sustainability and digitality (LTP 2.2)
• Online Workshop 2, from 8-14^th June, is for secondary educators, with a focus on sustainable entrepreneurship education (LTP 2.7)
• Finally, the Summer School, in Cyprus from 26-30 June, will include a broad range of LTPs, and the addition of LTP 2.6 ‘Green citizenship through a whole school approach’, and ‘dealing with climate disinformation through media literacy’ (LTP 2.5)

Detailed course information and registration will be open through the TAP-TS website from mid-January 2023.