Project No. 2023-2-FI01-KA210-ADU-000179217 Project duration: 1 February 2024–31 January 2025 Project co-funder: EU program Erasmus+ Project coordinator: Kansan Sivistystyön Liitto KSL ry (Finland)
Project partners:
Šiuolaikinių didaktikų centras (Lithuania)
PROJECT RELEVANCE
People are more aware of ecological and social crisis Europe and the world encounters. These huge questions arise many responses and feelings that need to be addressed with changes in attitudes, values, worldviews, actions and learning. Wellbeing of our planet is dependent on our actions. Therefore, we believe that adult education organisations and adult educators should take a more active role, be active agents in these changes as opposed to deny them or passively give in to them. This can be best done in our organisations by increasing the understanding of the matter and from there developing new pedagogy (eco-social education) towards transformation.
Eco-social education is relatively new term and implies to education as ‘Bildung’. Both ecological and social factors in Europe and in the world are raising concerns as vitality of ecosystems are in danger due to global warming and over consumption of natural resources. War in Ukraine and political shifts are also raising concerns about fair distribution of welfare and interpersonal solidarity. Eco-social education aims to transformation both in communities and individuals through critical thinking, reflection, dialogue, and emancipatory learning. Key competences of eco-social education are systemic worldview, taking responsibility, moderateness in all needs, interdependency of both humans and nature and orientation towards future. We need to advance the awareness, skills and knowledge that enable us to move towards and ecologically, socially, culturally, and economically sustainable society.
This transformation can be seen as a paradigm shift that needs to happen both within educational institutions and by them in their educational pedagogy and didactics. Values of eco-social education can be interweaved to learning processes through critical reflection, dialogue, and future orientation.
Educational establishments have an important mission in supporting the growth of their students as environmentally and socially responsible and skilled citizens who can consider the aspects of sustainable development in their work and everyday lives. We believe that adult education organisations and adult educators should take a more active role in supporting growth of their educators and target groups in their work as environmentally and socially responsible and skilled active citizens.
This kind of work needs time, effort, discussions, sharing and resources. In our joint discussions we have concluded that we don’t yet have a deep understanding of what eco-social sustainability and education means in how we carry out our trainings. We also need to understand better the needs and the challenges of both adult educators and adult learners. We see that our experience in critical pedagogy, sociocultural and socio-constructive pedagogy and in supporting active citizenship in our actions are a very potential basis for developing ideas and pedagogy that can benefit also other adult education organisations.
Therefore, in the project, we want to learn, how we can best integrate eco-social sustainability and education into our trainings. We want to understand the needs and the challenges of both adult educators and adult learners in becoming active agents of sustainability transformations. What does eco-social sustainability and education mean in practice? How do adult educators see their role as transformative allies to our training participants? How do the participants of our trainings approach the huge challenges of our time? How do they see their role in it? What kind of support and learning would they need to become transformative actors?
PROJECT AIM
The project aims to support adult educators and learners as eco-social agents by enhancing the knowledge and skills of adult educators on eco-social sustainability and education.
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
- Enhancing adult educators’ pedagogical skills in eco-social sustainability and education.
- Increasing adult educators’ understanding on how to support their educational target groups as eco-social agents.
- Establishing a common understanding of eco-social sustainability and education in the participating organisations.
PROJECT TARGET GROUPS
- Primary target audience: adult educators working in or in cooperation with the participating partnership organisations.
- Secondary target audience and beneficiaries: adult learners (of on-formal education).
- Other beneficiaries: the participants of the trainings organised by the partnership organisations.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
1. Mapping the needs and the challenges of adult educators and learners to act as eco-social agents
Developing a conceptual framework on eco-social sustainability and education.
Designing methods, tools and analysis framework for gathering the information from adult educators and learners.
Gathering the information from adult educators (a questionnaire) and learners (focus group interviews) and summarising the outcomes of information gathered.
2. Workshops with adult educators on eco-social sustainability and education
Planning the content and pedagogy for national workshops.
Conducting national workshops for adult educators in partnership countries.
Summing up the lessons learned and the outcomes of the workshops (in English).
3. Analysis, harvesting and sharing the results
Harvesting and summing up the results of the project.
Sharing the results in partnership countries with relevant target groups.
PROJECT RESULTS
- A conceptual framework on eco-social sustainability shared by the participating organisations.
- Systematically gathered and analysed information on the needs and challenges that adult educators and learners have to act as eco-social agents.
- A piloted workshop model for adult educators on eco-social sustainability and education.
- A plan for next steps to develop transformative pedagogy that builds eco-social agency.
The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.