Unique UNESCO Chair a coup for York

UNESCO Chair Charles Hopkins

This week York University announced that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has selected the University to host its Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability. Not only is this the first UNESCO Chair in Canada outside of Quebec, it is the first of its kind in the world, and the second UN-related institution in Toronto.

Stan Shapson, York's associate vice-president (strategic academic initiatives) and co-developer of the project when he was dean of education, expressed his pleasure with the announcement. "It is an honour for York University to host the UNESCO Chair at York," he said. "Both our Faculties of Education and Environmental Studies have taken a keen interest in education for sustainable development. The work is already underway and we expect to see very positive results in both the long and short terms.

"Education for sustainable development encompasses a vision that involves learning the knowledge, skills perspectives and values that will guide and motivate people to lead sustainable livlihoods, and participate in our democratic society."

Since the concept of environmentally sustainable development was endorsed by the UN in 1992, education, training and public understanding of sustainability has been recognized as a major objective of governments around the world. At the UN Commission on Sustainable Development meeting in New York in 1998, country after country testified that education was critical, however no models for implementing education for sustainable development (ESD) were readily available. Ministries of education in the majority of countries that wished to move forward were in a quandary as to how to begin.

The world has approximately 59 million teachers and experiences a five to ten per cent turnover rate each year. Retraining this number of teachers to address ESD would be an immense task. To approach this global need, UNESCO identified teacher education institutions as key change agents in reorienting education.

The administrations and faculty members of institutions of teacher education have the potential to bring about tremendous change because they create the teacher education curriculum, train new teachers, provide professional development for practising teachers, consult with local schools and often provide expert opinion to regional and national ministries of education. Because of this broad influence in the curriculum design, implementation and policy setting of education institutions, their faculty members can bring about the change that will promote ESD. By working with the administrations and faculty members of these universities and institutions, the education community can bring about systematic, economically effective change.

The York Chair has been created in response to this need.

The concept is to develop a network of teacher education institutions from different regions around the world who will work to find effective methods of addressing this problem, researching their successes and shortcomings and then sharing their findings with other nations and institutions through UNESCO.

Charles A. Hopkins, special advisor to UNESCO on its Transdisciplinary Project: Educating for a Sustainable Future, and co-developer of the project, will serve as founding Chair, working within York's Faculties of Education and Environmental Studies.

Hopkins is well suited to the position. He is executive director of the John Dearness Environmental Society (a Canadian environmental non-governmental-organization), and is Chair of the Education for Sustainable Development Working Group of the UNESCO Canada Man and the Biosphere Committee (MAB). Prior to this he was superintendent ­ curriculum with the Toronto Board of Education. Among earlier positions with the Toronto Board, Hopkins was a regional superintendent and both founder and principal of Canada's largest environmental field study centre, The Boyne River Natural Science School and The Toronto Urban Studies Centre, North America's only, school board owned urban studies centre.

In 1992, Hopkins served as the Chair of the World Congress for Education and Communication on Environment and Development which brought together over 4,000 individuals from 81 countries to the first major international follow-up to the UN Conference on Environment and Development. He was one of the drafters of the Education, Public Awareness and Training Chapter of Agenda 21 as part of the UN preparation for the Earth Summit in Rio, and has been a part of the UNESCO efforts to develop education for sustainable development since its inception.

Hopkin's short-term objective is to undertake, within an international network of teacher education institutions, research and experimentation on different approaches to reorienting teacher education towards sustainability, and sharing this experience. The research will be conducted within a common framework in order to compare results.

In the long term, the Chair will develop suggestions and guidelines for the reorientation of teacher education and its related structural issues including pedagogy, curriculum, research and evaluation. The work will facilitate collaboration between researchers and educators within York University and the project's international network of universities and teacher training institutions.

Hopkins is both enthusiastic and optimistic about the project. Many institutions have already expressed interest in joining the international network, he told Gazette. They will join a core group of administrators and faculty from 11 universities who first came together in 1997 at a UNESCO consultation in Thessaloniki, Greece, and agreed to work together as the Teacher Education Consultation (TEC). The TEC group comprises Aristotle University, Greece; Charles University, Czech Republic; Chulalongkorn University, Thailand; Federal University of Parana, Brazil; Florida Coast University, USA; Griffith University, Australia; University of Edinburgh, UK; Rhodes University, South Africa; University of Athens, Greece; University of Tennessee, USA (site of the secretariat for the program); and York University, Canada (site of the project Chair).

As well, Hopkins is working to bring an additional 25 institutions into the program. Strong interest has been shown by institutions in Denmark, Pakistan, Austria, New Zealand and Japan. Hopkins has also had initial talks regarding institutions in Russia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Indonesia and Mexico and anticipates that other institutions in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Central Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Central America will join the network.

The University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK) has generously agreed to provide interim secretariat services. Dr. Rosalyn McKeown, director of UTK's Center for Geography and Environmental Education, and who served as rapporteur to the TEC group, will serve as secretariat for the Chair and the international network. Dr. McKeown will coordinate publications and the overall research program of the Chair.

Member institutions will take on responsibility for developing and promoting locally relevant ESD. Activities such as organizing regional workshops, providing short courses, editing journals and producing distance learning will be carried out and as they gain expertise, they will be invited to share with the network and beyond. These member institutions must also agree to allocate funding, or be prepared to raise additional funds, to cover the projects they undertake and to send both a senior administrator and a faculty member to a program conference every two years. Hopkins anticipates that participants will first meet in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in March 2000 in conjunction with the Global Knowledge Partnership Conference.

"The term 'reorienting education' has become a powerful descriptor that helps administrators and educators at every level to understand the changes required for ESD," said Hopkins. "An appropriately reoriented basic education includes more principles, skills, perspectives and values related to sustainability than are currently included in most education systems.

"To effectively and completely reorient education to address sustainability, all disciplines in a teacher preparation institution can and should be involved in the reorientation process."