Project Ö (PR) - Teacher education for society: Making EFForTS knowledge available for Indonesia
The PR project responds to the question “How can we make EFForTS knowledge available to society?” and thereby “How can this knowledge be integrated into Education for Sustainable Development in Indonesia?” The project measures include to i) qualify teacher educators for teaching EFForTS issues, ii) develop didactically reconstructed EFForTS knowledge and evaluate it as well as iii) implement and further disseminate it. The implementation will take place in eight universities on four Indonesian islands. The educational material will be provided as Open Educational Resources to the public.
EFForTS aims at providing science-based knowledge (for decision making) regarding nature conservation, more sustainable land use and human well-being in the context of rapid transformation in the tropical lowlands. One way to make EFForTS knowledge available to society is formal education. The current Indonesian curriculum for secondary education defines competence-oriented learning outcomes for future citizens, which can be meaningfully addressed by EFForTS objects, i.e., topics, methods, results, and conclusions. Up to now, teachers are hardly prepared for teaching Sustainable Development relevant issues such as Land Use Change issues. However, teacher education is an engine for innovation.
The aims of the PR project are to i) qualify teacher educators of secondary education for teaching EFForTS objects, ii) develop and formatively evaluate didactically reconstructed EFForTS objects (EFForTS education), iii) implement EFForTS education including Open Educational Resources (OER) into Indonesian teacher education, summatively evaluate the effects and disseminate EFForTS education.
We prepared the PR project in a Bogor-Workshop 2018 with 19 Indonesian educational resource persons, i.e., representatives of the educational ministry, of curriculum and material development, of universities with pre- and in-service teacher education as well as school principals. Identified Indonesian collaboration partners for the PR project committed to the following: They integrate EFForTS education into basic modules of the nationwide curricula at State Universities with teacher education. For making EFForTS objects accessible for education, they agreed on suitable educational approaches highlighting historical and sociocultural understandings and competencies such as perspective taking, scientific reasoning, decision making, and problem solving. For the PR project, we establish a working structure that comprises a Professional Learning Community (PLC) of teacher educators, educational researchers and EFForTS scientific project researchers, an open teaching and learning platform and webinars for three successive PR project phases: First, EFForTS education with OER is designed, piloted at the University of Jambi (Sumatra) and further developed in the PLC. Second, teacher educators from Bali, Java, Sulawesi, and Sumatra adapt and test corresponding courses (of modules) of pre-service teacher education and in-service teacher training in their home institutions. The formative evaluation comprises observations, teaching and learning documents and artefacts, focus group discussions, and questionnaires. It shall optimise the PLC work, the qualification of teacher educators and EFForTS education – based on evidence. Third, an open book and all materials of EFForTS education are produced as OER in Bahasa Indonesia and English. We implement EFForTS education at eight universities on four of the most populated Indonesian islands and further disseminate it. Thereby, EFForTS-qualified teacher educators act as multipliers throughout Indonesia. Furthermore, we evaluate effects of the PR measures on Indonesian teacher educators, teacher students and teachers. The measures are designed to impact in the short-term Indonesian teacher education, in the mid-term students at school and in the long-term the public – nationally and globally.
