1. An assessment on how your own theme group worked when compared to the agreed procedures.
For our sustainability teaching assignment my group (Jay Thompson, Yanhong Xi) created a blog with learning resources and tasks. (http://interdisciplinaryappraoach.blogspot.fi/) .We started by having few Skype meetings to discuss the topic of sustainability from the perspective of culture, economy and ecology. We all had different experience and agreed to research on parts that we felt most knowledgeable about.
2. An assessment on how the planning and teaching activities were carried out in our theme group.
I think that overall our distribution of tasks went well and we all contributed with our strengths, Yanghong with her knowledge of economics and issue of sustainability in the school context. Jay with leadership, organization and editing skills. I have designed the blog with contribution to social and cultural aspect of research.
We also agreed that essay style tasks will bring out the higher level thinking skills and created a list of questions that focused on objectives:
· Demonstrated that students understand sustainable development within the framework of ecological, economic, cultural and social points-of-view.
· Students showed interest in evaluating the values and practices of own organization from the viewpoint of sustainability.
· Students were able to apply the principles of sustainable development in their work as a vocational teacher.
Perhaps one question should have been rephrased in relation to students who came from another country. It seemed that we just gave them some extra work to write about sustainability in their home country. We could have perhaps asked the Finnish students to give some brief overview about sustainability in a country where they lived in or spend some time in. Assuming that most people on the course have done that at some stage.
Overall we have had some good response to the tasks, 11 students submitted the work within the deadline. We have also divided the assessment tasks between Yanhong, Jay and myself.
Everyone was able to link aspects of sustainability with their own field:
For example Timo demonstrated very good understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility in his own field. Also he showed a critical and important aspect of sustainability in schools and the need for cross curricular approach.
Anna demonstrated very good understanding of sustainability from the point of view of culture and ecology by giving examples of corporate misuse of water resources in India and Pakistan. Also she showed a critical and important aspect of sustainability in schools and gave concrete examples of good sustainable practises related to the subject of photography.
Miko demonstrated very good understanding of sustainability from the point of view of culture and ecology by giving an example of beauty industry and the chemical nature of some its products from contents to packaging. Also he showed important aspects of sustainability in schools and pointed out the need for developing awareness for more eco-friendly products.
References:
Cabezas, H., Diwekar,
U. (2012) Sustainability: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives, Sharjah, Bentham Science
Publishers
http://formin.finland.fi/Public/default.aspx?nodeid=32099&contentlan=2&culture=en-US
Photography with an environmental theme from my students in Espoo International School
Photography with an environmental theme from my students in Espoo International School
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