ESD Teacher Training Toolkit

The development of the Carpathian Mountain ESD Training Tool Kit has been conceived as, and continues to be, a participative process on two levels: international and local. On the international level, a number of experts from all Carpathian countries were involved in elaboration of the Tool Kit structure and content. On the local level, the production of the Tool Kit is a continuous process, with multiple comments and inputs from Romanian educators.

A wealth of educational resources on ESD already exists or is under development by various partners in the Carpathians. Thus, the main aim of the Move4Nature project was not to produce any new materials, but rather to provide a guide to the existing materials in various thematic areas of mountain protection and sustainable development, also in connection to the Carpathian Convention, and to establish their links to the school curriculum, in a way to help teachers encourage critical thinking and reflection on sustainability issues in the local and regional context with their students. An important component of the Tool Kit is the inputs and reflections of the local users engaged in education, which  on one hand complete the Tool Kit with locally – specific examples and on the other hand give a valuable and inevitable input to the development of the next edition of the Tool Kit.

The main aims of the Tool Kit are:

• To encourage the teachers to look for connections and resources: such as natural parks and protected areas;
• To encourage the teachers to use the existing resources with the view of the Carpathian Sustainable Mountain Development;
• To encourage critical thinking and active participation of the communities;
• To facilitate interaction and experience exchange between the mountain communities within each country, as well as on a regional level;
• To collect local information on existing natural and cultural resources and sustainable development challenges, in order to provide local input into the natural and cultural resource inventories, and to form recommendations for national governments and international developmental efforts.

The Study Trail

The main activity of the Tool Kit is designing a local nature trail (the study trail): the teachers are guided to work with the students to make a “trail” representative of their local part in the Carpathians, taking into consideration resources and information provided by every chapter.

The chapters of the Tool Kit, most accompanied by thematic Carpathian maps, guide the teachers to finding possible “key points” in the school surroundings, such as the unique natural and cultural sites or areas of concern; the chapters also suggest a variety of educational activities, which can be performed with the students in connection with the “key points”. Connecting these key points together would complete the local study trail.

Complete with the feedback and inputs of the project partners and the Teacher Training participants, the Tool Kit will be distributed to the participating schools in Romania in time for the beginning of the school year 2009/2010. The electronic version of the Tool Kit will be available online for comments and further inputs. The Romanian version of the Tool Kit will be available on the HERO web-site, allowing for further comments, inputs and suggestions by the Romanian teachers. The English version will be available on the CASALEN web-site to facilitate comments, feedback, inputs and adaptation by partners in the Carpathians and other mountainous regions.

The Tool Kit Contains:

1. Introduction
2. Water - illustration of the Study trail concept
3. Spatial planning
4. Public participation
5. Biodiversity and local indicators
6. Transport
7. Waste
8. Energy
9. Cultural Heritage, crafts and technology
10. Sustainable tourism

Appendices:

1. Methodology
2. Climate change
3. List of activities in the toolkit
4. Maps
5. Main international references
6. Partners, supporters and relevant contacts