TRANSITION TOWARDS STRONG EFS

Transition towards Strong EfS

Transition towards Strong EfS

Introduction

Environmental education has been introduced officially in the Flemish education system in 1998 for primary education and in 1997 for secondary education, when the centrally formulated final objectives became operative.

The Minister of Education recognises 'Education for All' as a powerful instrument to realise a sustainable future. Therefore a broad and holistic view on education is required in order to realise new knowledge and skills for sustainable development.

EE in the Flemish Curricula

For both primary and secondary education, the Department of Educational Development of the Flemish Ministry develops final objectives for compulsory subjects, which are confirmed by the Flemish Parliament.

Some of these subjects (Geography, Natural sciences) contain objectives which explicitly relate to environmental education or sustainable development.

Besides the final objectives, both primary and secondary schools have to incorporate cross-curricular themes in their curriculum. In primary education there are two themes: learning to learn and social education. In secondary education there are 5 themes for the first grade (12-14 yr.), and 6 or 7 themes for the 2nd (14-16 yr.) and 3rd (16-18 yr.), depending on the kind of education (general secondary or technical/vocational education). An overview of the themes per grade is given in table 1. Environmental education is a theme that can be found in all grades and forms. Intrinsic values of EE are experience- and problem-based learning, learning through participation, emotional commitment, wellbeing and efficiency of the learning process, ethical awareness and taking responsibility in the decision making process.

In the introductory text of the cross-curricular theme 'Environmental education', the overall goal of EE is formulated as follows:

Environmental education is aimed at increasing environmental awareness, which is a fundamental contribution to sustainable development. This is based on the development of environmental literacy, i.e. knowledge of and insight into the relationships between man and environment. This results in a scientific and critical approach to concepts, which allows for more complex relationships between man and environment to be discussed later on. Here, account is taken of social, cultural, economic and ecological aspects, to which various subjects and other cross-curricular themes and educational fields can contribute. This entire approach leads to sustainable development education”.

In the first grade the approach mainly relates to the local context of the themes and the possibility the targeted pupils have to make observations by themselves. The (sub)themes in the first grade are: (1) air, water and soil; (2) living beings and environment; (3) society and spatial use and (4) waste.

In the second grade care for nature and traffic and mobility are emphasised. In the third grade nature and environmental policy and traffic and mobility in spatial policy are the main topics.

1st grade 2nd grade 3rd grade

? Health education

? Learning to learn

? Environmental education

? Education for citizenship

? Social skills ? Health education

? Learning to learn

? Environmental education

? Expressive-creative education

? Education for citizenship

? Social skills

? Technical-technological education (only for ASO) ? Health education

? Learning to learn

? Environmental education

? Expressive-creative education

? Education for citizenship

? Social skills

? Technical-technological education (only for ASO)

Considering ...