The UN and UNESCO define education as a vital tool in developing ESD to a global phenomena. In Europe this has been taken into account in curriculums widely but too often ESD education is considered as an ‘add on’. Instead it should be a natural and essential part of school culture in order to educate students towards a sustainable way of life. In this project - the different dimensions of school culture are explored in an international context - the school culture of every project school as well as the skills and pedagogy of the staff is developed- -the general guidelines for school are composed in order to become better ESD school. In analyzing the school culture we will use Schoen’s model (2005), which divides school culture into four key dimensions: 1) professional orientation, 2) organizational structure (leadership and management), 3) teaching and learning, 4) student-orientated activities. Each project meeting will focus on one of these areas and school-specific developmental work will be created. The purpose of the developmental work is to create a school culture that enables and promotes ESD in schools. The Final output of the project will be the guidebook called ‘A Roadmap to an ESD School’. This book will provide clear and achievable guidance on how to embed the principles and practice of ESD into everyday school culture across Europe.There are four schools taking part in this project, from Finland, Great Britain, Iceland and Belgium. Each of the selected partner schools has been committed to ESD for many years and is well known for this work within their local communities. Each partner school has been selected for the strengths and expertise it has in specific areas of ESD. Each school has engaged a complimentary specialist external partner with a remit to promote ESD. The partner organisations will provide expertise to support the implementation of the planned Erasmus project and will work with schools for the duration of the project.The project will be implemented in schools at three levels: management level, teacher level and student level. The project work will be informed by a rigorous survey cycle, including an initial and final survey. Surveys will involve a range of stakeholders including students and parents and will be used to inform action plans and measure impact of work done. School managers will be responsible for implementing action plans during the development cycle of the project, teachers will be trained to deliver comprehensive ESD education, and students will participate in ESD education and share their experiences with other project schools. There will be one project meeting arranged in every project country and the final meeting is arranged by the coordinator. Alongside and to successfully implement this work, there will be four international teacher training courses. Professional development for teachers will be arranged in the project countries. The training will focus on the four themes of ESD. As teachers develop their pedagogical and methodological abilities, so students will get improved, quality learning experiences in in all areas of ESD.
The UN and UNESCO define education as a vital tool in developing ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) to a global phenomenon. In Europe this has been taken into account in curriculums widely but too often ESD is considered as an ‘add on’. Instead it should be a natural and essential part of school culture in order to educate students towards a sustainable way of life. There were four schools taking part in the ECORoad project, from Finland, Great Britain, Iceland and Belgium. Each of the selected partner schools have been committed to ESD for many years and they were well known for this work within their local communities. Each school also had a local specialist partner for supporting the schools' work to implement ESD. The ultimate target for ECORoad was to change pupils’, families’ and the whole community’s way of life to a more sustainable one. During the project we focused to improve each participating school’s culture to enable and support teachers work and school’s daily life within ESD. Through local and international trainings teachers learned new skills and developed their practices in designing and delivering ESD for their pupils. In addition to the local goals, the project wanted to influence the wider audience by producing a booklet, “Roadmap to an ESD school”. There were five project meetings, four of which focused on a specific area of school culture. Based on theories we divided school culture into four parts 1) Professional orientation, 2) Organizational structure (leadership and management), 3) Teaching and learning and 4) Student-centered focus. Before each project meeting there was self evaluation for the staff about the current practice in the specific area of school culture. During the meetings schools shared the results of their self-evaluations- their strengths and areas for development- and, in consultation with their partner schools and specialist partners, drew up an action plan with three targets for development. These targets were then implemented at school and the outcomes shared at the following project meeting. This kind of working methodology was good and it structured the development tasks into smaller parts. Between project meetings ECORoad also organized four teachers’ trainings into different aspects of ESD. Those themes were 1) Health and wellbeing of our establishment, 2) Outdoor education, 3) Living to learn or learning to live and 4) School's ecological daily life. Each participating school organized one training together with their specialist organization. Training programs included workshops of different methodology of ESD, job shadowing, visiting different schools and nature activities. After each teachers' training week there was an organized survey for participants and the feedback was very positive. Teacher trainings were useful for the whole project, because after the training sessions more participants felt ownership for the ECORoad project. We produced and published a booklet, ‘A Roadmap to an ESD School’ to encourage and support other schools to embrace ESD. The booklet is a comprehensive guide on how to develop a school culture which supports ESD based on our own journey. The booklet is universal and contains practical instructions and questionnaires. It was printed for the dissemination events, but it is freely downloadable from the ECORoad project’s homepage at https://ecoroad.weebly.com/. The ECORoad project had objectives for four different target groups: pupils, teachers, project schools and other schools nearby and far. Based on surveys and self-evaluations implemented in the project, it can be seen that ECORoad has influenced the school culture for implementing sustainable development. The surveys made at the beginning and at the end of the project showed that the awareness of sustainable development among staff in project schools had increased and that pupils got more school experiences related to the theme of sustainable development. Examples how we improved our school culture and practical examples of activities made by pupils can be seen in the booklet “Roadmap to an ESD School”. During and now at the end of project each participant has developed their own dissemination plan e.g. consultations, presentations, articles. The main message in dissemination events has been 1) education has important role for promoting sustainable development, 2) the school culture affects how sustainable development is implemented in teaching and school’s daily life and 3) “Roadmap to an ESD school” shows some of our steps to be taken toward ESD school. There are still many possibilities to improve ESD in project schools, but it can be said that these schools are now ESD centres of excellence in their own area. ESD is now more integrated into the school culture and the project has ensured that ESD is not a passing project in these participating schools but now embedded in their core values.