Developing a community of practice on education for sustainable development: first steps towards the design of a storyboard

Abstract

This study is part of a research project that aims to develop an online Community of Practice (CoP) to promote Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in the Portuguese context. Its potential members (teachers, pupils, parents, researchers and others) will collaborate in order to develop educational resources, to develop and share innovative teaching and learning strategies underlying an ESD approach, and help national school projects to implement an ESD approach. The aim of this paper is to present the first phase of the project: to collect the perceptions of a multidisciplinary team of researchers, who have different competences, about the principles that help to develop and sustain a CoP in the scope of ESD. Through a design-based research approach, the main technical and educational guidelines that emerged from a focus group survey will be presented. Some of the main key ideas discussed were (i) the need to be supported with the provision of teacher training and consultancy services, (ii) the identification of teachers that are already leaders in their own schools, and that could assume the leadership of this CoP, and (iii) the importance of opening the community up to other type of users, with different possibilities of access and interaction.