The Cyprus Pedagogical Institute of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth, announces that, in cooperation with ten other partners from seven European Union countries, participates in the project Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS) under the Erasmus+ TeacherAcademies project. This participation is considered a major success, as this project succeeded in securing funding as one (1) of the eleven (11) Erasmus+ Teacher Academies proposals selected for funding in 2021, among a number of proposals from across Europe. The project has received funding of €1.5 million, for a period of three (3) years and is expected to be officially launched in May 2022.
The coordinating institution is the University of Dresden TUD in Germany. Two other universities, the University College Dublin in Ireland and the Pedagogical University of Vienna in Austria, two institutions for the continuing professional learning of teachers, one of which is the Pedagogical Institute of Cyprus, and the Santarém Polytechnic Institute in Portugal are also participating. Three schools are also involved: the Friedrich-Schiller Gymnasium Pyrna (Germany - secondary education), King's Hospital School (Ireland - secondary education) and Grundschule Prückelmayrgasse (Austria - primary education). The team is complemented by an educational technology company (EUMMENA, Belgium), an organisation representing civil society on sustainability issues (CorEdu Leipzig, Germany) and a quality assurance company (K&R Education Malmö, Sweden).
The TAP-TS project aims to strengthen the capacity of teachers at all levels of school education to teach sustainability, focusing on key axes for Europe such as social inclusion, digital literacy, environmental sustainability, entrepreneurship, as well as exploring pedagogical approaches. To this end, the TAP-TS project will design and implement pilot learning and teaching packages. In addition, professional networks and teacher learning communities will be established to promote the dissemination and use of these packages.
Below are the main activities of the project, organised in work packages.
- Design, pilot and publish high quality learning and teaching packages covering issues of sustainability, resilience, citizenship, entrepreneurship and digital literacy.
- Inform the design and development of learning packages, involving teachers in their implementation in a variety of teaching and learning contexts and creating a community of practice within and beyond the duration of the project. The above will be achieved through online, hybrid and face-to-face teacher professional learning activities.
- Implementation of new teaching strategies and pedagogical approaches, including collaborative and digital materials, and related feedback on them. Feedback will be taken in the context of in-depth teacher learning practices, through face-to-face discussions and interaction between teachers and trainers from different countries.
The Cyprus Pedagogical Institute has undertaken to organise two five-day summer schools aimed at exploring learning and reframing the professional identities and competences of participants in relation to sustainability teaching. The summer schools will provide further feedback on the learning packages, familiarising teachers with the content.
Through ongoing critical interaction with experts in the field and content, including policy makers, trainers, students, teachers involved in continuous professional learning, curriculum developers, monitoring and evaluation indicators will be used to track the effectiveness of project activities.
Finally, the project will develop mechanisms through which it will communicate and disseminate its results and ensure that they are widely used within and outside its lifetime, as well as the sustainability of the Academy. TAP-TS seeks to engage teachers and teacher trainees (students) from across Europe and to formulate expertise and materials for teacher learning.
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