International Consultation

Forty TVET experts from 17 countries, including Canada, Australia, China, Thailand and Vietnam, discussed ways in which sustainability can be integrated into TVET teacher education and capacity building programmes in the Asia-Pacific region at the meeting “International Consultation on Education for Sustainable Development: TVET Teacher Education towards Sustainability”. This international experts meeting was held on 19-24 August 2007 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The meeting was organised by UNESCO-UNEVOC with the support of the Office of the Vocational Education Commission (OVEC), Ministry of Education, Thailand, and in partnership with InWEnt (Bonn), the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Programme of Educational Innovation for Development

(APEID) (Bangkok) and the UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability, York University (Toronto).

The objectives of the meeting were to

• map the scope and contribution of TVET TE to ESD;
• identify the issues arising for TVET TE in strengthening the contribution of TVET to ESD;
• identify ways of strengthening the contribution of TVET TE to ESD; and
• develop an agenda and action plan of research, programme profiling and development for strengthening the contribution of TEVT teacher education to ESD.

The paper presentations and working groups focussed on the following issues (among others):

• Relevance of education through TVET and ESD;
• TVET and ESD teacher education reform; and
• Decent Work: workplace and workforce reform from the worker up.

Intended outcomes of the meeting were:

• A framework, grounded in illustrative case studies, identifying the scope of the contribution of TVET teacher education to ESD;
• An articulation of the issues arising for TVET teacher education in strengthening the contribution of TVET to ESD;
• A conceptualization and articulation of approaches to strengthening the contribution of TVET teacher education to ESD;
• An agenda and action plans of research, program profiling and development for strengthening the contribution of TVET teacher education to ESD; and
• Recommendations to the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre in Bonn on how the Centre and its Network may contribute to that agenda and the action plans.

Documents

Final Report (pdf, 590 KB)

Preliminary Consultation Report (DRAFT) (Word, 260 KB)

Links

Thailand to lead environment project Article in The Nation (Thailand) on 29 August 2007