Since 1 September 2019, competences pertaining to citizenship, living together and sustainability are part of the curriculum of secondary education in Belgium. This also includes global citizenship competences, e.g. integrating different perspectives and understanding how global challenges can have a local impact.
To ensure future teachers have these competences, global citizenship needs to be embedded in initial training of teachers and the continued professional development of teacher trainers. Moreover, non-Western perspectives on global citizenship can enrich teacher training colleges in Belgium, e.g. through an international dialogue with other teacher trainers.
Teacher trainers have strengthened global citizenship competences thanks to international cooperation, based on the contact hypothesis. Mutual learning and perspectives from other contexts are taken up in the curriculum.
The Lesson Study project is part of an overarching partnership between a university college in Belgium (Howest) and a university college in Zambia (Malcolm Moffat College of Education). These university colleges offer teacher training.
The project is built around three phases:
- Using the Lesson Study method, teachers trainers from Belgium and Zambia develop a lesson on a sustainability-related issue that fits well within their respective curriculums. When a teacher trainer teaches the lesson, their colleagues observe them. Afterwards, the lesson is comprehensively evaluated (which includes feedback from students), redeveloped and taught and evaluated a second time. In a second phase, this process is repeated in the university college of the partner university college.
- Through monitoring and evaluation, the impact is measured.
- The results are shared widely through the channels of VVOB, Kruit and Djapo.
By the end of the Lesson Study project...
- non-Western perspectives on global education and other themes that are touched on in teacher training, are brought to Belgium and Zambia.
- the collaboration between the university colleges and teacher trainers has led to (i) the development of an equal partnership, (ii) a broadened outlook on the world and (iii) the development of global citizenship competences in teacher trainers.
- the teaching practices and lesson methods of Belgian and international teacher trainers concerning sustainability themes, has been improved.
