10th Conference on Environmental Education in Europe
10th Conference on Environmental Education in Europe
CEEE’s 10th Conference is being organised under the aegis of the European Foundation for Education and Sustainable Development in collaboration with the Centre for Environmental Education & Research, University of Malta. CEEE’s conferences regularly attract experts in the field of Education for Sustainable Development from all over Europe and beyond. The theme for the 2008 conference is ‘Thinking & acting outside the box’.
CEEE has traditionally attracted different actors in environmental education – from national governmental bodies to local authorities to grassroots movements to academics – helping in bringing together different interests and concerns and acting as a crucible for emerging challenges and trends.
Successive CEEE meetings have provided participants with fora exploring the various dimensions of environmental education and its evolving concerns. With its focus on “Learning for a Sustainable Future”, CEEE 2002 (Gent) initiated a process whereby the main concern of the conference centred on finding tangible ways of addressing educational issues related to sustainable development. CEEE 2005 (Klaipeda) consolidated this development by establishing clear guidelines to move “From Policy into Practice” – a fitting preamble to the onset of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD).
CEEE 2008 aims to continue this natural progression of events by providing an opportunity for an in-depth analysis of our practice in line with the UNDESD principles. CEEE 2008 acknowledges that the environmental education community is getting aware that its contribution to a more sustainable world has to be made more concrete. It should work on yielding the results that have been promised over years of discussion and debate. CEEE 2008 also recognises that addressing the challenges of sustainable development will require a radical, methodological change in the way (environmental) education - is carried out and thus perceived by society. Without a determined effort to keep focused on this fundamental perspective we would be running the risk of missing out on the revival that the UNDESD aims to achieve. Goals and objectives
Using specific issues, such as climate change, poverty eradication and biodiversity, CEEE 2008 will offer environmental educators the chance to:
meet with colleagues in order to define more clearly the role of environmental education in specific fields of sustainable development (sectoral approach, social learning, etc.) and share experiences of good practice;
consider the lessons of complexity in the field (systems approach) and explore how they are being addressed;
analyse and discuss the application of approaches from and cooperation with other fields of education;
identify how to cooperate between different cultures and spheres of interests in society; and
List a set of actions that need to be undertaken to further develop environmental education in Europe.