POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS ON BIOECONOMY, OCEANS AND TREES IN EDUCATION

The online workshop “Policy Recommendations on Bioeconomy, Oceans and Trees in Education”, co-organised by the GenB, Life Terra, and EU4Ocean projects, was held to present the lessons learnt and results from these three projects and to discuss with the MoEs how to deliver actionable policy support.

This workshop was open to members of the Scientix Ministries of Education STEM Representatives Working Group¹ and their guests. 10 participants from 9 different MoEs² attended the workshop, which showcased the impact to date of the results and lessons learnt from the three environmental education initiatives and discussed with the MoE representatives how these resources can be incorporated into their respective educational paradigms.

Building on the discussion from a previous workshop, where we explored the length, depth, and format of policy recommendations and other policy background documents, this event moved on to highlighting the common policy considerations and challenges impacting the introduction of environmental subjects into the practice of European teachers.

From the need for trustworthy knowledge and accessible resources to quality professional development offerings, teachers across Europe face the same needs and challenges when introducing new pedagogies and topics into their teaching. In this dynamic discussion, we explored how Scientix® and the projects can help policymakers support their teachers. The workshop shed light on curriculum design and reform processes and on the need and opportunities for official endorsement and recognition of resources and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) offerings.

We summarise the core findings below:

• Education reform processes are country-specific and often involve a political component. Policy recommendations therefore need to account for national and regional specificities and be adaptable.
• It is key to depoliticise environmental education by contextualising it at supranational level and aligning it with competences and international agendas. One important way of promoting the project and its products is by contextualising them within EU and International Political and Pedagogical ambitions, not only the European Sustainability Competence Framework (GreenComp) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but also the European Framework for the Personal, Social and Learning to Learn Key Competence (LifeComp) or the Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp).
• Policy recommendations must be understandable to teachers and highlight resources that schools and policymakers can pass on or add to National repositories, frameworks, etc.
• Teacher training initiatives, networks and groups can make an important contribution to taking reforms forward and are crucial for making available the products, resources, and tools of projects.
• Teachers’ and students’ perspectives are valuable in curriculum design.

The valuable insights from the workshop will serve to refine the design of the projects’ policy supporting documents and recommendations due in 2025. These results will also provide the foundations for the review and mainstreaming of all future Scientix® Policy Documents.

Read on for a more detailed account of the workshop.

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