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Sustainability: Towards the Appreciation of Resour..
Sustainability: Towards the Appreciation of Resources
Start date: Sep 1, 2014,
End date: Aug 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Sustainability is about social as well as environmental change. It includes some of the greatest challenges of the present age, such as demographic change and ecosystem change, including the phenomenon of climate change. All of these challenges have wide implications for society: in particular, future generations need to increase their awareness levels on such phenomena, such to contribute to the dissemination of more sustainable practices. To make this happen, educators in schools need to update their knowledge on sustainability and include in their teaching more interdisciplinarity, language skills, digital tools such to make knowledge more attractive. Within this context, the new EU strategy (Europe 2020) aims to intervene in the areas of climate change and sustainability, as well as in the education and social emargination.
The objectives of the STAR (Sustainability: Towards the Appreciation of Resources) project are to reduce school drop-outs, differentiate the teaching content and methodology as well as increase the european dimension at school. These more general objectives will be translated in objectives specifically tailored to the project content. First, knowledge on and tools to manage sustainability will be acquired; second, CLIL (CONTENT AND LANGUAGE INTEGRATED LEARNING) methodology will be disseminated and CLIL didactic material on sustainability will be produced; finally, local case studies on sustainability, which will be compared internationally, will be studied.
To implement project activities, six schools gathered under a strategic partnership; the coordination of activities is undertaken by the italian school Euclide (Bari, Italy), other partner schools are from France (Lycée Professionnel Claude Nicolas Ledoux), England (Uxbridge College), Turkey (Isov Teknik ve Endüstri Meslek Lisesi), Romania (Liceul Teoretic "Vasile Alecsandri" Iasi) and Czech Republic (Gymnazium, SOS, SOU a VOS, Horice). Project activities will be carried out over a time span of three years: during the first year, students and teachers will work on the context of sustainability (definition, main areas of sustainability, constrained resources such as water, energy and food); in the second year, students and teachers will focus on the management of sustainability (innovation, risk management) a well as on the new competencies and skills needed for management; in the third year each partner school will select a local case study to work on, using the knowledge and tools acquired previously.
Work will be carried out using CLIL methodology and digital tools for communication among project partners and with target groups such as students, families, public authorities and private companies, other school staff, etc. Expected tangible project results are a glossary of terms on sustainability and an ebook on CLIL material on sustainability. Expected non tangible results are an increase in students’ motivation, in language and digital competences.
Potential longer term benefits are linked with the use of CLIL methodology and CLIL material in the classroom, use of digital tools for didactics as well as the fostering of collegiality and interdisciplinarity among teachers.