How do you engage with elementary school students around sustainability issues? And how do you structurally anchor this approach as part of GCE in teacher education? This is what Djapo researched together with the preschool and primary education teacher training programs at Vives and Howest.
Djapo joined forces with students and teachers from the preschool (BAKO) and primary (BALO) teacher training programmes at Kortrijk Vives, BALO at Torhout Vives, BAKO and BALO at Bruges Vives and BAKO and BALO at Bruges Howest. Together, we wanted to integrate systems thinking into teacher training in an increasingly sophisticated way.
Themes within sustainability and global citizenship are often too complex to understand at a glance. Systems thinking therefore lends itself very well as a key skill for global citizenship education.
For instance, using methods of work and lessons based on systems thinking, you can visualise themes such as climate, fair trade and food waste and chart their causes and consequences. You also see how the parts relate to the whole and learn to look from different perspectives. Systems thinking also shows how events in different places in the world affect each other.
We don't know today what the solutions will be to tomorrow's challenges. That is why it is important for teachers not to preach solutions to children, but to teach children to think about possible solutions themselves.
Second-year BaKO and BaLO students from all participating colleges were initiated into systems thinking through in-service training and demo classes. A number of students also immersed themselves through research, living labs or as members of the sounding board group, in which a core team of lecturers also participated.
The knowledge and experience was compiled in a Practical Guide to Systems Thinking for Global Citizenship Education, which is freely available to all (future) preschool and primary school teachers. The guide is only available in dutch, however.
This project came about with the support of the Province of West Flanders. Join for Water, Studio Globo, Oxfam Wereldwinkels, Kleur Bekennen and Kruit also participated as partners.