Handprint for Change: Teacher Education Handbook

The handbook was developed as a set of practical tools for activating ESD in school subject teaching. Working with teachers, we questioned ESD as a succession of problems to be resolved by students. We refined practical lesson planning tools to expand conventional methods towards positive, knowledge-informed and ethics-led learner agency for enacting change around a deepening love of self, others and surroundings in times of global change.

Handprint partners researched formative papers to clarify the pedagogical contours for a Handprint approach to ESD. In South Africa, learning materials for teacher education were developed through Fundisa for Change (Learning for Change) course-supported design research work with teachers.

Our widening work on the inclusion of sustainability education in subject teaching was supported by Engagement Global and undertaken in partnership with teacher educators in Mexico, South Africa, India and Germany. Collaborative work to compile a teacher education handbook was coordinated by the Centre for Environmental Education, Ahmedabad, the originating home of a Handprint approach to ESD.

Design research work with teachers and teacher educators enabled us to inform practical expansions of conventional teaching practices to activate ESD in school curriculum settings. This exploratory work informed an open-ended Handprint CARE pedagogy for ESD in school subject teaching.

The review of formative papers that follows, scopes the open-ended contours of Handprint CARE pedagogy. This informed the activation of course-supported learning communities where teachers learn together to integrate sustainability concerns in their subject teaching.