TAP-TS
Table of contents
The Teacher Academy Project - Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS) is one of eleven European projects in the new Erasmus+ Teacher Academies funding line, which the European Commission is supporting from June 2022 to May 2025. The project aims to strengthen the teaching sustainability competences of primary and secondary teachers and student teachers.
The project consortium comprises in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden and Germany, who will develop, test and publish teaching and learning materials on sustainability. The project will involve further teacher educators and teacher trainers from across Europe to develop materials through online courses, blended learning events and summer schools. Once the materials are published, the project aims to expand teacher participation through a network of educational institutions from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, as well as Bulgaria, Northern Macedonia and Turkey.
The project consortium includes four teacher education institutions, two leading national teacher training institutions, three schools, a leading educational technology company and two non-profit civil society organisations (from Malmö and Leipzig). This interdisciplinary project brings together expertise in relevant areas such as digital learning, education for sustainability, inclusive schooling, quality assurance, and others.
In the following, the five focus areas, the so-called work packages, and the project partners responsible for them are presented:
Work Packages des Projekts
Responsible institution: Center for Teacher Education and Educational Research (ZLSB), at TU Dresden (TUD)
This Work Package addresses all activities related to the general administration, management and coordination of the project as a whole. This includes chairing a monthly Project Steering Group meeting, with representation from all project partners, and facilitating communication between partners. It also includes communication with the European Commission on financial, administrative and contractual aspects of the project. Work Package one provides internal monitoring and evaluation to the project, capturing participant numbers over the course of the project and other impact-related activities (such as publications and conferences).
Responsible institution: Pedagogical University Vienna, Austria (PHW)
This Work Package centres on developing, piloting and publishing innovative, practice-oriented content packages for teacher training, aimed at developing primary and secondary school teachers’ competences for teaching sustainability. The final product will be seven high-quality, open and flexible learning and teaching packages (LTPs), structured into standardised ECTS modules, which can be freely adopted or adapted by teacher education institutions worldwide.
The seven titles are:
- A Sustainable Europe (Secondary Teachers)
- Sustainability and digitality (Primary Teachers)
- Sustainability & Environmental Education (Primary Teachers)
- Climate Crisis Resilience (Secondary Teachers)
- Dealing with climate disinformation (Secondary Teachers)
- Green Citizenship in/for Europe (Primary and Lower-Secondary Teachers)
- Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education (SEE) (Primary and Secondary Teachers)
Responsible institution: Eummena (Belgium-Greece-Croatia) (EUMMENA)
This Work Package centres on the delivery of three teacher engagement formats: online workshops, actively learning events (blended learning) and summer schools (face to face). Coordinated by EUMMENA, the development of each activity type is led by one of the following project partners:
- Online Workshops (EUMMENA),
- Active Learning Events (PIS),
- Summer and Spring Schools (CPI and FSGP)
Work Package 3 supports the piloting and development of LTPS, by engaging teachers and student teachers with draft units. The Work Package also supports the over-arching objectives of strengthening teacher mobility and internationalisation in teacher education, and providing high-quality professional development opportunities for teachers.
Responsible institution: K und R Education, Sweden (KRE)
This Work Package centres on quality assurance, monitoring and evaluation of TAP-TS. This includes convening the Pedagogical Advisory Board (PAB) a working group of pedagogical experts internal to the project, and the Pedagogical Advisory Group, a working group of ‘critical friends’ external to the project. KRE lead on the development and implementation of a monitoring and evaluation framework (a Theory of Change), monitoring and evaluation tools, and produce an annual monitoring and evaluation report which captures project achievements and areas for further development.
Responsible institution: University College Dublin, Ireland (UCD)
The purpose of this Work Package is to evaluate and apply the project results and to plan the long-term perspective of the Academy. This covers the design of internal and external communication, procedures and tools (including website and social media visibility) as well as all dissemination measures of the project activities and results. Furthermore, it includes a systematic planning of the expected results and the anticipated impact of the project beyond the project’s lifetime. The strategically targeted communication guarantees that all relevant target groups are reached and that the project has impact throughout Europe.
Visiting address:
Seminargebäude II, Rοοm 13 Zellescher Weg 20
01217 Dresden
Postal address:
TUD Dresden University of Technology Centre for Teacher Education and Educational Research (ZLSB)
01069 Dresden
Project director: Prof. Dr. Axel Gehrmann
Project coordinator: Dr. Rachel Bowden
Project officer: Maria Richter-Babekoff, M.A.
Past events
Since the project's start on 1 June 2022, there have been five workshops as part of the project's virtual kick-off event on 7, 8 and 9 June 2022. These workshops focused on the project's work packages. The kick-off allowed the project partners to come together for the first time to discuss the concrete planning and implementation of the project milestones, possible forms of communication within the consortium and the design of the LTPs.
More information on the kick-off event can be found here.
As lead partner, the ZLSB hosted the Project Planning and Partnership Meeting from 5-7 October 2022. The meeting enabled the project partners to directly discuss the content of the seven teaching-learning packages. Various events were also planned for 2023 as part of the meeting. Further information can be found here.
The first TAP-TS Summer School, which took place from 26-30. June 2023 in Larnaca, Cyprus, focused mainly on testing materials, resources and activities already developed as part of Learning and Teaching Packages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The event also provided opportunities for reflection on resources and activities and aimed to create a community of educators committed to education for sustainability. In addition, the summer school provided participating teachers with inspiration for approaches and practices that can facilitate the learning and teaching of sustainability. More information can be found here.
The event was the second Summer School organized by the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute (CPI) as part of the TAP-TS Teacher Academy project. It brought together primary school teachers as well as teachers from all over Europe to discuss methods, strategies and practices to promote sustainability goals.
The TAP-TS Autumn Academy took place from September 27 to October 1, 2024 under the motto "Beyond borders: Whole school approaches to sustainability education for secondary level educators" and brought together secondary school teachers, head teachers and teacher educators from all over Europe. The event focused on the Whole School Approach to Education for Sustainable Development, which was examined using the example of Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium Pirna, the host of the Autumn Academy, using a mosaic principle developed by the school itself. Further information can be found here.
Funding
This project has received funding from the European Union’s ERASMUS+ Teacher Academies Action under grant agreement No 101056248.