OWLHK together with the Curriculum Development Institute of Education Bureau, the Conservancy Association, Green Power, the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, Ocean Park Institute and WWF-Hong Kong, we organized the Panel Discussion and Outdoor Workshop on Education for Sustainable Development that held on 7 May 2019. This programme was designed for school teachers and each participated teacher can get Continuous Professional Development (CPD) hours.
This was a well-planned training programme, and it was also a rare opportunity for the six local environmental education organization, together with the Education Bureau, working together to push the development of school ESD in Hong Kong.
The aims of this programme were:
- To understand the relationship between education for sustainable development, values education and life education.
- To gain new insights from case studies of biodiversity education, with “environment” as the teaching theme.
- To gain authentic experience on the positive impact of outdoor learning.
Starting the programme, we had Dr. Tam Ka Keung, the Chief Curriculum Development Officer of Moral, Civic and National Education Section, EDB to share with us about “Nurturing students’ positive value and attitude from the development of ESD”.
And then for the panel discussion, we were very lucky to have experts from various discipline, including science education (Prof. Winnie So, Director, Centre for Education in Environmental Sustainability, EDUHK), geography education (Dr. Irene Cheng, Assistant Professor, Department of Science and Environmental Studies, EDUHK), psychology (Dr. Kevin Tam, Associate Professor, Division of Social Science, HKUST) and drama education (Dr. Phoebe Chan, Head of Performing Arts Research, HKAPA), with Mr. Terence Tang (Education Manager, the Conservancy Association) and Dr. Xoni Ma (Education Director, Outdoor Wildlife Learning Hong Kong) being the hosts, we discussed and explored lots of relations, possibilities and applications of ESD in school education.
After panel discussion, we had also invited two teachers to share their experience of conducting ESD in schools, including Mr. Hung from Pui Shing Catholic Secondary School and Mr. Lau from Emmanuel Primary School, Kowloon.
In the afternoon, six environmental education organizations led various outdoor programmes respectively, and let participants to experience different modes of Education IN the environment approach in ESD.
OWLHK led the “Tai Po Orientation” programme, with the use of gaming education, participants can learn about city biodiversity and sustainable development. We utilized the urban environment to design this programme because we hope teachers can replicate this programme in the nearby environment around school campus.
At the end, the programme completed smoothly and fruitfully. Thank you for all the participated teachers, collaborators, guests and the support from EDB.
Mainstreaming ESD in formal education is the target of OWLHK. We are eager to organize teacher training regarding different topics in environmental education or education for sustainable development, to help teachers understanding the principles and building capacity in EE and ESD. We can tailor-make training programmes for schools, please feel free to contact us for any enquiries and we can discuss further.
