Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies ... - Unicef

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Central and Eastern Europe
and the Commonwealth
of Independent States
Earthquake Research Institute, the goal of the project was
to create a basis for the institutionalization of a more thorough
disaster awareness education programme through the
developmentof curriculum materials and the training of 15,000
school-based basic disaster awareness instructors (BU KOERI
& TR MoE et al., 2005, 1).
Under the curriculum development heading, an Instructor’s
Handbook, an instructor CD-ROM, an audio-visual slide
presentation with instructor notes, an instructor’s skills guide
and guidance materials for monitoring and evaluation were
developed. The Ministry distributed 25,000 copies of the
Handbook and CD-ROM to teachers. Nationwide training
for instructor-candidates became available on the Internet by
means of a ‘rich distance learning self-study programme’ (Ibid. 2).
More than 2,000 teachers have successfully completed the
Basic Disaster Awareness Distance Learning Programme.
From some 700 applicants, 118 teachers were selected to
be instructor-trainers (two from each of the 41 provinces and
four from each of the nine most populous provinces). They
received a five-day training session. By the close of 2005,
114 active instructor trainers had trained more than 22,700
school-based instructors. An estimated 190,000 teachers
received some disaster awareness training using the Internet
portal in 2005 with the five-year total (as at 2010) standing at
294,000 teachers (Ibid. 2-3).
Alongside the cascading involvement of educators, it is
estimated that 5.9 million students, 107,000 non-teaching
school personnel and over one million parents received some
in-person or distance training between 2005 and 2010 (Ibid.).
Evaluations of the 2003-2005 project show a very positive
impact with significant gains in teacher and student knowledge
and ‘dramatic increases in family household hazards adjustments
and school hazard adjustments’ (Ibid 3).
Learning Outcomes/Competencies
No fully itemized and stand-alone listing of DRR-specific student
learning outcomes has thus far been developed but disasterspecific
‘lesson gains’ are present in the new curriculum
whenever a disaster issue is the main focus for learning rather
than a carrier resource for other learning. To illustrate the
difference, when grade 1 students investigate how natural
disasters transform the environment as part of the Introduction
to Sciences curriculum (see above), there are clear DRR-related
learning outcomes such as the ability to ‘ask and answer
questions on earthquakes’ and to ‘take basic measures against
earthquakes within the classroom’. On the other hand, when
grade 4 students use data on earthquake durations to practice
measurement (see above) then the learning outcome, i.e.,
explaining the relation between minutes and seconds, bears no
direct relation to DRR.
Disaster Risk Reduction in School Curricula: Case Studies from Thirty Countries