Topic:

All

Duration:

10+ hours

Learning objectives:

LORET helps to demonstrate to students how working with sustainability challenges can go hand in hand with realising pedagogical ambitions. LORET offers didactic tools to involve students in real-world problems in such a way that it offers them the experience that their work can really make a difference.

Description of the learning process and activities:

LORET is designed to support teachers in using real-world problems relevant to the local community as a starting point for education. The guiding principle is to combine engagement with societal problems and the realisation of curriculum objectives and, in doing so, offer students unique educational opportunities and hope. Through LORET workshops, teacher teams develop a plan for implementing locally relevant teaching and design a series of lessons that take students along in an authentic sustainability problem-solving process.

LORET workshops are designed according to the principle of ‘blended learning’. The trajectory consists of an alternation of meetings and preparatory assignments. Planning locally relevant sustainability teaching with LORET involves five workshop meetings, each prepared by the participants through an assignment carried out in advance. A LORET teaching team can consist of 2-10 teachers.

Preparatory assignment 1: Identifying locally relevant sustainable development issues

The trajectory starts with preparatory work done by the teachers in the LORET team who list locally relevant sustainability problems. As decided in the preparatory meeting, this can be done with or without the active participation of students and/or local stakeholders. 

Workshop meeting 1: Turning sustainability problems into educational content – didactical carving

The participants select a sustainability problem from the list of identified locally relevant challenges and turn this real-world problem into educational content through a process of ‘didactic carving’. That is, they ‘carve out’ of this massive societal problem a (sub)problem that will be suitable for the students to work with: a problem that is manageable and susceptible for the students and that bears the potential to take them along in an authentic sustainability problem solving process.

Preparatory assignment 2: Identifying fruitful resources for supporting the students' inquiry

The teachers make an inventory of resources that can help the students to address the problem. They list what the school subjects they teach have to offer in this respect as well as what the local environment, actors in the local community, organisations, media, etc. have to offer.

Workshop meeting 2: From inventory to planning

The participants present their preparatory work and construct a collective mapping of fruitful resources for supporting the students’ inquiry. If the result is too much to address in one project or one school year, a prioritisation is made regarding which curriculum and local environment resources will be in focus in the LORET plan.

Preparatory assignment 3: Preparing a LORET plan

The teachers reflect on how they can design lessons in which their students first explore the locally relevant sustainability problem and subsequently generate possible ways to solve it. They identify connections to the curriculum goals they aim to address, determine the number of lessons they will spend on it and the content for each lesson, identify the teaching methods and activities, and formulate ideas on how to collaborate with colleagues and organise the lessons so that the students can effectively integrate the knowledge from the different school subjects.

Workshop meeting 3: Creating a LORET plan 

The participants present their preparatory work and bring it together in a collective overall teaching plan. The collective result is critically examined: Is the teaching content well-chosen? Do the chosen teaching methods and activities foster authentic inquiry? Are ecological as well as economic and social aspects of sustainable development covered? Are students stimulated to integrate knowledge from different school subjects? Will students learn theoretical/abstract knowledge and insights as well as practical skills, communication skills, inquiry skills, attitudinal aspects, ethical and democratic competences, etc.? Are there strong connections to the local community? Etc.

Preparatory assignment 4: Preparing a LORET plan – Part II

After performing the lessons planned in workshop meeting 3, the teachers reflect on how they can design lessons in which their students experiment with implementing (one/some of) the generated solution proposals and evaluate their problem-solving process. Each for their own teaching practice, they again identify connections to the curriculum goals they aim to address, determine the number of lessons they will spend on it and the content for each lesson, identify the teaching methods and activities, and formulate ideas on how to collaborate with colleagues and organise the lessons so that the students can effectively integrate the knowledge from the different school subjects.

Workshop meeting 4: Creating a LORET plan – Part II

The participants present their preparatory work and bring it together in a collective overall teaching plan. The collective result is critically examined: Is the teaching content well-chosen? Do the chosen teaching methods and activities foster authentic inquiry? Are ecological as well as economic and social aspects of sustainable development covered? Are students stimulated to integrate knowledge from different school subjects? Will students learn theoretical/abstract knowledge and insights as well as practical skills, communication skills, inquiry skills, attitudinal aspects, ethical and democratic competences, etc.? Are there strong connections to the local community? Etc.

Preparatory assignment 5: Document the LORET work

The teachers document their LORET plan and lessons so that these can be shared and inspire other teachers. They reflect on what went well, what could be improved, and if there is any need/desire to follow-up the LORET work in a subsequent trajectory with the same or other students.

Other remarks:

LORET was invented by Leif Östman and Staffan Svanberg in 2004, while working on a project on education for sustainable development in Mongolia. It has also been used for instance in the context of the EU funded SEAS Science education for action and engagement towards sustainability project.