The objective for this phase of the Circular Skills program focuses on the professional development of the teacher in relation to environment and didactics. The solicitation states that teacher development should focus on two areas:

- The close collaboration with the environment and how to facilitate this as a teacher
- Development in the field of new forms of knowledge transfer and instruction.

Windesheim University of Applied Sciences - Community Of Practice

Following the above goals and contact with members of the SDG impact LAB Windesheim, we have chosen to collaborate with the Hogeschool Windesheim in Zwolle. Through the LAB's contacts, in April 2021, we held exploratory talks with several people from various disciplines/educations to raise awareness of the Circular Skills program and ask out needs.

• Team leader and Industrial Product Design teacher
• Teacher of Engineering & Design
• Lecturer // Internship counsellor // Member of Curriculum Committee // SDG Impact Lab Windesheim University of Applied Sciences: Windesheim Honours College // Degree Programme: Global Project and Change Management
• Lecturer researcher: domain Business, Media and Law // lectureship Networking in a Circular Economy // HBO Law program
• Lecturer Finance & Control Windesheim: Connected to lectureship Networks In a Circular Economy (NICE)

Based on these discussions, we got in touch with the Community Of Practice (COP). The COP consists of different disciplines from the Engineering domain, namely; mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, technical business & logistics engineering and industrial product design. Together they are developing the minor "sustainable technology" in which the ambition is to integrate sustainability and circular skills into the assignments of the minor. This ambition has in advance the challenge in the complexity of interdisciplinary collaboration from the different content needs of the separate disciplines in designing the minor.

Developing the minor

After exploratory discussions with the mechanical engineering team leader, a teacher with sustainability portfolio and the COP lead, the need for support on this development process was identified. The request to O3-effect was: Supervise a number of development meetings of the COP in which to work on the development of the new minor. The guidance should focus on:

• Commitment to the shared principles of teaching subject matter in the minor
• These principles are consistent with the principles of learning for sustainable development and the elaboration presented earlier to the COP
• Designing teaching so that the principles are translated into a concrete teaching activity
• Facilitating conversation and collaboration across disciplines

Meetings and results

You can read more about the meetings and the results of this project here!