In February 2024, the GEO-Academy consortium published a report entitled “Overview of features, competences and tools for Education for Sustainable Development”. The purpose of the report is to identify and summarise key features of education for sustainable development (ESD) and key digital, green and spatial competences for lifelong learning, as well as existing educational material and tools that may enhance teachers’ green and spatial skills towards an effective STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics) ESD.
At first, the report covers a comprehensive literature review on the use, structure, organisation, and principles of pedagogical approaches for teacher education and their professional development for ESD, as introducing Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Earth Observation (EO) in schools would help students understand the difficult aspects of environmental and climate change science as the remoteness of impacts. This chapter concludes that most teachers need specific training in non-traditional subjects, especially in topics like GIS and EO, as well as data analysis to acquire working knowledge and to fully understand its educational benefit. Universities carry out regular courses on EO and GIS, addressing graduate students, however no relevant experiences have been developed in teaching methodologies for GIS in primary and secondary schools.
Moreover, as the main objective of GEO-Academy is to establish a network for teacher training on how to take advantage and teach geospatial technologies towards an effective ESD, the report identifies five major geo-concepts, which will assist in harnessing digital, green, and spatial skills of both teachers and learners. Those geo-concepts are the following: (1) Cartography, map literacy, and development of spatial thinking skills (2) GIS Tools, and Techniques for Earth Sciences, (3) Remote Sensing (RS), EO and satellite applications, (4) visualization and synthesis of information through the use of mapping technologies – map storytelling, and (5) STEAM education, robotics, and coding for urban sustainability.
Finally, the report presents an analysis of available resources and tools, initiatives and research projects that are designed to enhance ESD, with a special emphasis being placed on key digital, green and spatial competences for lifelong learning. Based on this analysis, Geo-Academy classifies tools and resources in four overarching categories, taking into account their educational use: Instructional resources (articles, workshops, etc.), Collaboration resources (forums, chats, etc.), Practice resources (software, online labs, etc.), and Assessment/evaluation resources (questionnaires, partial evaluations, etc.). The identified tools and resources may serve as the basis for the e-learning modules of GEO-Academy, which will be uploaded on the upcoming online GEO-Academy GEOBSERVE platform, serving as an updated and dynamic repository of resources for teachers interested in ESD.
