This brochure was written by colleagues from Flanders. The Flemish government, where both worked at the time, says the following about it: 'The publication is a vision forming reflection document on the concept of education for sustainable development. This concept is still evolving. The brochure aims to give teachers, educators, youth workers, ... a practical insight into the main principles of ESD. These principles were further elaborated on the basis of a number of 'reflection questions' that make the principles concrete. The document also contains numerous practical examples'.
By that 'vision-shaping' they mean that ESD (what we usually call 'sustainability education' or 'learning for sustainable development' here) includes six principles (see the brochure). These are not all new, which is why I only want to mention: 'ESD promotes systems thinking'. In education and teaching, there is a lot of focus on complex issues. And here, in my opinion, we have a good opportunity to apply the basic principles of systems thinking to the translation to the SDGs which are, after all, multidimensional. A course on this already exists, see here.
The second attraction of this brochure lies nmm in the presence of reflection questions, per ESD principle. To take another principle: value development. There we find (see again the brochure), as an example, also these, actual, reflection questions:
- How does the target audience learn to distinguish between factual knowledge and value-based opinions?
- Is the target audience encouraged to explore the values and interests behind opinions? How?
I would like to get in touch with LvM members who are interested in jointly setting up a course on such issues. For workers in education and teachers. Chris Maas Geesteranus (bronmaas@gmail.com)
