The policy of the European Sustainability Competence Framework was adopted in June 2022. This innovative deepening of educational ambition identifies the key skills that are required to meet the profound systems-level challenges that we face.

This course opens up the powerful role that teachers can play in advancing our understanding and response to the sustainability crisis. The new framework is certainly challenging. How do we mobilise our students to “engage in complexity” and “exploratory thinking”? How do we raise their learning to “systems thinking” and enable them to do effective, “problem framing”? And given the challenges posed by widespread misinformation and political cynicism, climate anxiety and social trends towards polarisation, how do teachers provide empowering “futures literacy”, that can inspire students to “promote nature” and “fairness”. How can schools develop “political agency” and “collective action” in a safe and robust way?

This course will first take a tour of the four “competence areas” of the new framework, before providing an opportunity to be actively engaged at a new level of sustainable education. The mainstream science is emphatic in its conclusions, the status quo is not sustainable. Education, like every other domain of society needs a fresh and regenerative response that is constructive, not intimidated by the science. This course offers the first few steps in that direction.

Duration and workload