REPORT OF UNESCO EXPERT MEETING ON - APCEIU

History of This Project and Document
During the 1990s, UNESCO identified teacher-education institutions and teacher educators as key
change agents in reorienting education to address sustainability. In 1997 UNESCO held a Teacher
Education Consultation in Thessaloniki, Greece in conjunction with the Environment and Society:
Education and Public Awareness for Sustainability conference. Twenty-one participants from institution of
teacher education from nine nations attended the meeting to discuss paths forward to reorient teacher
education to address sustainability. Subsequently, in 1998 the United Nations (UN) Commission on
Sustainable Development (CSD) work program on Education for Sustainable Development called for
UNESCO to develop guidelines for reorienting teacher training to address sustainability. In order to
accomplish this task, UNESCO and York University, Toronto, Canada agreed to establish a UNITWIN /
UNESCO Chair in 1999 to provide advice to UNESCO and institutions of teacher education. UNESCO
passed the task of developing guidelines for the reorientation of teacher education to the UNESCO Chair at
York. As a result, one of the long-term goals of the UNESCO Chair is to develop guidelines and
recommendations for reorienting teacher education and associated realms of pedagogy, curriculum, and
other related issues. (p. 12)
To write the guidelines, the Chair established an international network of more than 30 teachereducation
institutions in as many countries. Educators at these institutions worked collaboratively to identify
various ways of achieving this goal. The UNESCO Chair has convened three meetings of the International
Network. The first took place in Canada in October 2000, the second in South Africa in September 2002,
and the third in Sweden in 2004. At the first meeting, the Chair used the Education for Sustainable
Development Toolkit (McKeown, Hopkins, and Rizzi, 2000) to create a common understanding of ESD.
The Chair also adopted the Toolkit as the official document of the Chair and the International Network. At
the first meeting, the participants explored ways to move forward with reorienting teacher education to
address sustainability. In general, each institution decided upon its own avenues for experimentation, based
on the contexts of its community and nation. At subsequent meetings and in reports, participants shared
their efforts related to reorienting teacher education to address sustainability. The group also developed and
agreed on a format to document their efforts. The Chair and Secretariat distilled the experiences and
wisdom from the efforts reported by the instituions into the guidelines. (p. 12)
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