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Austria

National Coordinator

National ENSI work

Eco-schools

The ENSI based Eco-school network (www.oekolog.at) with 390 registered eco-schools focuses on the topic “Energy and sustainable future“ in 2010 - 2012. The upcoming focus topic will be “School Meets Community“, in parallel to the EU-network project “Collaboration of Community and School for Sustainable Development – CoDeS“. Over 15% of the eco-schools reached the national environment award (see www.umweltzeichen.at->Bildung). The Eco-school-network is based and stimulated by ENSI´s philosophy and whole school approach. The ENSI-teacher-team with its scientific advisor Prof. Peter Posch has supported the Eco-school-network from its conceptual development over the pilot phase to the network formation and now offers seminars to introduce the “Quality Criteria for ESD-Schools“ to Eco-Schools (see below).

The challenge for the year 2012/13 will be the integration of the ECO-school network into the new Quality Development Initiative for the General School System of the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture.

Teacher training

In-service university course: Education for Sustainable Development – Innovation in Teacher Education:

In order to implement ESD in teacher training a two year training course for teacher trainers on ESD was developed and carried out in the years 2007-09 under the scientific guidance of the University of Klagenfurt. (see www.umweltbildung.at/bine). Its curriculum was revised in 2011 and the new course will start a third time in October 2012 and will last until October 2014

'Quality Criteria for ESD School' - Seminars for the development of ÖKOLOG Schools in Austria:

The concept for the seminars was designed by the Austrian ENSI Team using the Quality Criteria (QC-GB.pdf) as approach to reflect quality of school life. Since 2007 2 – 3 seminars have been offered to school heads and ÖKOLOG school co-ordinators annually. (see: Lechner, Christine (2009), “Quality Criteria for ESD Schools: an Innovative Approach for Teacher Education in Austria“. In: Gregor Mohorcic (ed.), Journal for Developing the Global Dimension in the School Curriculum. Ljubljana.

Austrian ENSI web site

The web site www.bmukk.gv.at/ensi is part of the official web site of the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture and helps to present ENSI to the wider public in Austria.

Contribution to COMENIUS networks

CoDeS

Austria is partner in this EU network project “Collaboration of Schools and Communities for Sustainable Development“ (2011 – 14) and has organised the first CoCeS-conference in Austria in May 2012.

SUPPORT

Austria has been involved in the COMENIUS network “Partnership and Participation for a Sustainable tomorrow – SUPPORT“ (2007 – 10) coordinated by Norway and has contributed with a number of seminars and workshops.

SEED

Austria has co-ordinated this EU COMENIUS 3 Net work project “School Development through Environmental Education“ SEED (2002 – 2005) which laid basis for a number of EU-Comenius-involvements of ENSI.

Website Links

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