HomeAbstract of 4th-etconfEmpowering Greek teachers to integrate citizen science in their school environmental education practices through an online training course

Empowering Greek teachers to integrate citizen science in their school environmental education practices through an online training course

  • Nov 30, 2022
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  • Category: Abstract of 4th-etconf
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Proceedings of The 4th World Conference on Education and Teaching

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Empowering Greek teachers to integrate citizen science in their school environmental education practices through an online training course

Maria Daskolia, Naya Grillia2 and Maria Pliota

 

ABSTRACT: 

Teachers are recognised as key players in Environmental Education (EE) in pursuing goals that seek environmental, social and educational change. By engaging students in learning about environmental and sustainability issues, environmental educators aim to equip them with the appropriate concepts, content knowledge and skills, while nurturing their values and skills for democratic participation in shaping more sustainable futures. On the other hand, citizen science, defined as work undertaken by or within citizen communities, with the support and coordination of scientists and other community actors, also aims to promote scientific literacy and research skills in participants, encourage democratic participation and promote community action on local and global environmental and sustainability issues. However, although the two fields have much in common, synergies between them and the resulting opportunities for teaching and learning remain largely unexplored.

This paper argues that reinforcing synergies between EE and citizen science is possible and compatible if we focus primarily on strengthening the role of teachers who will take over this endeavour. To this end, teacher training is identified as a key action to support such initiatives. Here, we present the outline of an online teacher training course implemented in the framework of the European project Cos4Cloud. Aimed at Greek Environmental Education teachers, this 100-hour course sought to empower participants in the collaborative design of educational scenarios that incorporeated the use of citizen observatories platforms and tools. We also briefly describe an evaluation study conducted to explore the participants’ experience of this training course.

keywords: environmental education, citizen science, teachers’ training, online training course, Cos4Cloud project