Global Dialogues on Education for Sustainability (EfS)
Principal Supervisors

Dr. WAN Wai Yan Sally
(Department of Curriculum and Instruction)
Duration

1 year 4 months
Approved Budget

HK $100,000
 
  • Abstract

Abstract

Global dialogue is very important to help and mediate the development of global mindsets towards Education for Sustainability (EfS) (Jamison, 2018; Wegerif et al., 2019). The proposed project is conducted in a core course called “Global Dialogues on Education for Sustainability (EfS) in the Curriculum” in a newly proposed bachelor degree programme in global education as run by the Faculty of Education, where students directly take part in meaningful dialogues with “global peers” (i.e. students from The University of Bristol and The University of Bergen) concerning EfS issues, covering four key themes: (1) Motivation to teach Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), (2) Learning and teaching strategies for sustainability, (3) Inclusive education in the local and global context, and (4) Creativity and innovation for developing global competency. The key objective of the project is to enable students to engage in global dialogues on EfS. The specific learning objectives of the course are as follows:

  1. To understand the concepts of global dialogue (knowledge)
  2. To evaluate and make suggestions on learning and teaching strategies in ESD (knowledge)
  3. To explain and analyze the key concepts of education for sustainability (e.g. UNESCO Global Citizenship Education, Global Goals for Sustainable Development) (knowledge)
  4. To act and speak in a dialogic way (skill)
  5. To engage in an open dialogue with “global peers” and facilitate dialogue for deepening learning in a collective way (skill)
  6. To listen to self and others, speak openly, and respect others (skill)
  7. To be self-aware of personal and be open-minded towards the views of “global peers” (attitude)
Specifically, to provide global experiences for students to be aware of the self as a global citizen and promote global mindedness (Tichnor-Wagner, 2019), as facilitated by a pre-dialogue theme-based mini-lecture and a post-dialogue reflection session, online global dialogue activities will be carried out in synchronous (virtually at the same time) and asynchronous (at different times) forms (Kienle, 2009) for the purpose of catering for diverse needs of different learners (Hrastinski, 2008) and regional time zone differences (Appana, 2008). Synchronous online dialogues will be done on an innovative platform called ZOOM for video conferencing with “global peers” from the UK and Norway whist asynchronous online dialogues will take place with the use of KEEP (https://course.keep.edu.hk/submitCourse), which is a current cross-institutional project led by CUHK that which serves as a Learning Management System (LMS) for facilitating offline asynchronous dialogues and enriching learning contents across regions in a secure, responsive learning environment (Hamutoglu, Gemikonakli, & Gezgin, 2019).