6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

The ENSI project as research into ‘quality’

• The Environment and School Initiatives (ENSI) project was started in 1986 on the proposal of the OECD-CERI

• The school practice was at the centre and we were looking for initiatives that would foster environmental awareness and students’ development of dynamic qualities such as initiative, independence, commitment and readiness to accept responsibility.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

The environmental crisis is a knowledge crisis

* Complexity was one of the key words in the ENSI project, to indicate the impossibility to reduce the environment, living being and the knowledge itself to a machine or to a mechanism.

* A discussion on complexity involves the assumptions of everyday life and of the culture in which we are often unconsciously immersed.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

The observer is part of the system

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

Compare and contrast different points of view

• Environmental education offers a ‘global’, ‘systemic’ and inter-disciplinary approach because

• it allows dealing with concrete real issues without simplifying them beforehand,

• accepting a working method that never loses sight of the context,

• and that allows comparison and co-operation between viewpoints, value judgements and disciplines.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

Situational knowledge

• Knowledge can only be constructed through an individual process which gave value and meaning to experience and communication.

• This context-linked knowledge is meaningful because it is useful and can be used in real life and not because it is part of a programme or because it is ‘objective’ or detached from reality; indeed, it involves value judgements, expectations and all that which makes an experience important and meaningful.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

Teachers as reflective practitioners

• The teacher’s role must change: from someone who transmit knowledge to someone who must to learn to construct significant contexts and to ask ‘legitimate’ questions within which students can actively create their meanings.

• Confidence shifts from confidence in contents - established rules, data, methods - to confidence in processes that allow

us not to eliminate but to keep error under control. • The innovative teacher has to take on the burden of

incompetence.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

Action research as a tool for school development

• Action research envisages a cyclical process of planning, action, evaluation and reflection that can apply both to environmental issues and also to problems arising in educational innovation.

• Pupils engage in active enquiry and action in the environment and teachers research the educational strategies they employ.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

The process of change from ‘classroom initiatives’ to eco-schools

• The school becomes a focal point for knowledge production that is useful in their neighbourhood: “not just a library in which to find past information but a centre in which the community can come together to debate and deal with problems”.

• EE (or EfS) as education for citizenship, for critical participation and for taking personal responsibility in actions and decisions concerning the natural, social, cultural and economic environment.

• School can become a learning organisation.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

Sustainability in schools as

pedagogical sustainability, related to the school pedagogical offer: curricula, methods, school atmosphere, etc.

organisational and communicational sustainability, between students and teachers and parents and staff,

school buildings and school management sustainability.

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

Quality criteria for ECO school Development

•The SEED-EnSI research will highlight the process of change from ‘classroom initiatives’ to eco-schools, within a context in which

• the term environment embraces the natural and the technical environment and the social and intellectual environment as well;

• the “ecologization” of schools has to be examined at the three levels of pedagogical, socio-organisational and technical/economic level;

6-9/XII/2002 Comenius 1 Contact Seminar Reichenau

….other explicit criteria

•particular attention will be given to projects focusing on the learner as a constructor of his/her own knowledge by means of intentional and active learning processes - and in this way enhancing her/his active involvement and role (dynamic qualities);

•particular attention will be given to projects focused on the involvement and participation of all the stakeholders, and on the construction of learning networks which links schools with families, communities and workplaces.