Speakers

There will be a great variety of speakers and workshop leaders performing at the conference.
Here is a short summary of their presentations.

Rea Raus
“Deep ecology- a pathway to teacher sustainable self"

What lies in the core of the discussion about sustainability? All of us, probably, agree that we need to protect nature, save resources, recycle…but why the real changes are so slow? We, as teachers, what are the issues we need to address in every single lesson? Is it even possible- transdisciplinary approach in teaching and learning? What should we teach? What should we learn? How? These are the questions that we will seek answers together in the workshop.

Sofia Savelava

“ESD as a method for learning for all"

The workshop will cover essential questions related to understanding ESD as a learning method. For example: What is the difference between ESD and other educational practices? How can ESD practice be characterized? What are the specifics of ESD as a method of learning and of organization of educational process? What is need for this practice to actually take place? And who is it relevant to?

Wolfgang Brunner

“Content, Methods and Competences for a Rapidly Changing World. A navigator for the development of Education for Sustainable Development.”

SWEDESD is involved in a multiyear collaborative partnership with universities and teacher education institutions in the SADC region of southern Africa. This partnership on ESD has led to a number of general findings that could be of use in a wider context and within other networks.

In this workshop we will present an EDS Navigator that demonstrates the interconnected and mutually dependent dimensions of ESD, representing relevant content, effective methods and desired competences. The workshop participants will have the opportunity to use this navigator and discuss:

Key concepts that represent relevant content for ESD,

Methods that help to create effective pedagogy, and,
Competences resulting from a pedagogical process combining content and methods.

We will also present examples on how we used this navigator in designing workshop programmes, workbooks and online courses for teacher educators.

Paula Lindroos and Sinikka Suomalainen

“ESD materials for teachers and (other) learners”

The participants of this workshop are invited to get acquainted with the learning materials produced by the Baltic University Programme (www.balticuniv.uu.se). The materials are produced in a wide cooperation, with examples from the whole Baltic Sea Region. The contents vary in a range from basic course on sustainable development, the Baltic Sea environment, the Baltic Sea region’s societies and culture, to environmental management and sustainable agriculture. They are also produced for different academic levels. In addition the BUP website also links to useful sources outside the Baltic Sea region. The workshop will focus on the use of these learning materials, not only in universities, but also in a wider range of formal and informal education. Participants are also encouraged to present and share their own materials.

Māris Kļaviņš

“Sustainability issues in agenda of higher education”

Concept of education for sustainable development requires change of approaches for all levels of education but especial role have higher (university) education. Accordingly to approach “training of trainers” education for sustainable development at university level can cover maximally wide coverage of all levels in society and can support implementation of ESD concept in other levels of education. A key role in ESD implementation at university level has training on environmental issues.

Diāna Pauna
“A Pathway to Entrepreneurial Educational Institutions”

In national policy documents a sense of initiative and entrepreneurship is described as one of the priorities for educating individuals at all levels for the future labor market, and entrepreneurial skills are described as one of the eight lifelong learning competences. However, educational institutions and educators are provided insufficient support to implement the stated policy guidelines. The Kauffman Foundation in the US, the world’s leading advocate of entrepreneurship, encourages and supports educational institutions and educators to become the drivers of entrepreneurial skills, and it is argued that Europe has much to learn from the US entrepreneurship education approach. Even though there is no one-size-fits-all approach, good practice examples explored in the United States can spur a productive discussion and generate ideas of embedding entrepreneurial education across educational institutions at all levels.

Tamara Malkova and Ostap Stasiv
“Bring the politicans in !"

It is clear that those who make decisions at national or local level should perhaps to be aware about sustainable development. Unfortunately, politicians and authorities try to care about economic and social development and forget about the third pillar of SD. Unfortunately, governmental structures are usually narrow-minded and limited by their concrete fields of activities. Civil society takes a responsibility: force them for integrating, push them to cooperate, teach them how to do that.

The workshop participants will find together the best ways for politicians’ engagement into the process, approaches to their education, methods to raise their interest to the issue.

Inga Belousa

“Localizing global issues: Envisioning hopeful futures of local communities”

Sustainable development of local communities is one of the most urgent priorities to be highlighted and implemented in the current age of globalization. It embraces not only worldviews and expectations, experiences and competences of each community member but also shared understanding of common local and global hopes and responsible engagement into co-creative building and implementing of hopeful future scenarious. The workshop will be based on inductive reasoning, holistic and interactive involvement that integrates three fields – community development, education for sustainable development, and future studies, especially contribution represented by Robert Jungk, Elise Boulding and David Hicks. To interpret the notion of sustainable development within everyday reality of community method of glocalization that translates urgent global issues into personal and local community everyday life and method of envisioning hopeful futures will be applied.

Ilga Salīte & Dzintra Iļiško “Educational action research for sustainable development”

The aim of learning: Recognition of features of action research by evaluating participants lived experiences. The participants will be offered an opportunity to choose and to reflect on their own experience when they take part in solving a social question with a sustainability aim in mind.

This workshop will provide the participants with the opportunity to reflect on a theory of action research as a complex theory. For a better perception of an action research we will offer metaphors reflecting the essence of action research. This workshop will provide the participants with the opportunity to evaluate the complex nature of action research by the use of metaphors. Metaphors will be offered on the diverse perspectives of conducting action research. Thus, workshop participants will be offered an opportunity to find particular features of action research.
The second part of the workshop will provide participants with the opportunity to select and to evaluate a case from one’s own life that could serve as an action research grounded in one’s life experience lived with a common goal, common interest and a voluntarily participation in action that was important for reaching a common goal. Participants will be invited to work in pairs and to share their experience.
- The participant who tells about one’s case at the end of one’s story tries to argue why his/her chosen story reflects an action research.
- The participant, who listens to his/her colleague’s case and argumentation, tries to evaluate this story as reflecting sustainability or unsustainability.
The third part of the workshop allows space for the summary and conclusions about one’ s readiness to identify features of action research in one’s lived experience by identifying its’ sustainability or unsustainability as viewed through one’s frames of reference.

Agita Līviņa and Māra Maurīte
“How the cultural historical and natural heritage impacts the sustainable development of a place?”

The participants of the workshop will be invited to think about different ways how the cultural historical and natural heritage impacts sustainable development of a place and also local inhabitants - when discussing about place, than terms such as identity, belonging, community can be linked also with a heritage. The aim of the workshop is to recognize a diversity of impacting factors on different stakeholders which are involved or to be involved in processes of the development of a place, for example, locals with strong roots and connections with a place, entrants, tourists, local and external entrepreneurs. In this context it is crucial how we can communicate with different stakeholders about values and roles of cultural historical and natural heritage to promote the sustainability of place.

The workshop is prepared by the support of the State Research Programme project Economic transformation, smart growth, governance and legal framework for sustainable development of the state and society – a new approach to the creation of a sustainable learning community (EKOSOC-LV).

Sachiko Ishihara, Enkhtuya Boldkhuyag and Jesse Schrage

"Ekolibria: a student-led organization for Education for Sustainable Developement"

Ekolibria is a student run organization that has for aim the dissemination of knowledge on sustainable development issues so as to enhance the young generations’s ability to actively take part in the future transformation of society. The organization’s purpose is to transfer relevant knowledge to high school students while at the same time enabling university students to develop their pedagogical skills. With an approach embedded in the practice of ESD, there is a strong focus on experimental forms of teaching.
Creating such learning environments has helped to address the many economic, social and environmental dimensions of SD in the classroom while at the same enabling the development of skills both for university and high school students.
In this workshop, the participants will be introduced to the structure of the organization and the many activities run by Ekolibria. In a second part they will discuss how the role of youth can be increased in ESD around the Baltic Sea. In order to help develop and drive their own ideas, the participants will join in a specific form of idea generation methods termed the “Lotus blossom” technique.

Dace Helmane

“Education for Sustainable development - it’s everyone’s business.”

On one hand businesses overall the world faces different sustainability challenges, on the other hand they are potentially powerful drivers of change. How can educators and businesses cooperate in order to contribute to sustainable development? Are there already any good practice examples in world, Baltic States, Latvia? What is the business case of investing in ESD?

Agnese Alksne “CSR education for company executives: spill ove options?"

What skills are needed to bring CSR in to organizations everyday life? We tend to forget that organizations are created by people. Systems and mechanisms are supporting the organizations trying to minimise the peoples influence, e.g., mistakes or compliance to ethics. How we can change organizations? In a workshop we would like to focus on CSR as set of values determinate by people who work in organisations. Do we know how to recognize common values and live by the values in the organisations? Where we learn to do that? Does education in universities or even schools are ready to open for value orientated education? Do we need our students to be more critical and think out of the box, e.g., create value based business models?

Frans Lenglet “Echoes from Nagoya"

We will explore the implications of the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development - Learning Today for a Sustainable Future, which is scheduled for 10-12 November 2014 in Nagoya, Japan. In particular we will determine how we and our organizations can respond to and make use of two global programmes that will be launched at the Conference:

UNESCO’s Global Action Programme on ESD. It will guide world-wide ESD work in the coming five years.
The “Sustainable Lifestyles and Education” Programme. It is one of the five 5 programmes that make up the 10 Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP).

Both programmes invite practitioners, researchers and policy makers to take systematic action in order to embrace and promote ESD, its content and methods, and to apply it in daily practice. At the end of the workshop we should have identified a small number of initiatives of joint ESD action, across sectoral and geographic boundaries, in terms of practice, policy and research.

Charles Roberts

“Reflective practice in Formal and Non-formal education”

To respond to the challenge of global environmental and social problems we need to ensure that the coming generations have the tools to confront them

Reflective practice is one such tool.

In a world of industrialised education, thinking skills and critical thought often take a backseat in favour of preparing young people to make their contribution to an economic growth paradigm that is destroying the planet.

Reflective practice provides a counterbalance to this.

Originally adapted for use with International students at Universities of applied science in Finland, this tool has since been shared with a number of NGOs to deepen the experience of their volunteers.

After an introduction of the concept and adapted tool, there will be a short video then the participants will split into small groups and use the tool to deconstruct the film and report their findings.

Solovyeva Elena and Julija Lobanova "Designing a sustainable environment: Game Technologies in theory and practice"

The process of designing a sustainable environment requires the efforts of many professionals. Separate aspect of the understanding and development of the theory of sustainable development is the education and training professionals who are professionally engaged in designing artificial human habitat: architects, town planners, engineers and builders. Currently, the system of training of these professionals is largely based on the creative (for architects and urban planners) or technical (engineers and builders) educational models of the last century.

How to implement new ideas in outdated pedagogical practices? How to raise a post industrial society required skills? Our workshop is dedicated the game technology used by in our pedagogical practice. We will tell and show educational games, projects, creative activities which are used to develop the idea of sustainability. We invite all who wants along with us to design the perfect urban environment and in a playful way to protect your project together with the other participants.

Adi Musabasic and Ann Häger

“Project funding for international cooperation

in the Baltic Sea Region”

What aspects are important to consider when applying for project funding? This workshop will cover the policy, assessment criteria and assessment process of project funding. These aspects of the project funding mechanisms of the Swedish Institute will be presented by the workshop leaders, followed by discussion among the participants about different project funding institutions which are relevant to ESD in the Baltic Sea Region and discussion on the participant’s experiences of project funding institutions.

Marilyn Mehlmann

“Measuring & evaluating success in ESD”

What do we mean by ’successful ESD’? Let’s bring out different ideas for criteria, and see whether we can reach some consensus. Thereafter we will choose one of two topics for the remainder of the workshop, using the criteria as a starting point:

Participatory evaluation methods: An introduction to some basic lessons we have learnt about collaborative learning-from-experience.
Measurements and statistics: Some key points about measuring resource use, behaviour change, and change of attitude. How can behaviour statistics be aggregated and used?