Sustainability Starts with Teachers

Building on the models of curriculum and course activated T-learning, the Sustainability Starts with Teachers is a partnership programme between the Rhodes University ELRC and the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA). The programme centres T-learning for Teacher Educators in 11 southern African countries. 

Since its inception and initial piloting, the SST programme has become a leading UNESCO-led capacity building programme for teacher educators on Education for Sustainable Development in Southern Africa. Its aims are to strengthen the implementation of ESD in teacher education institutions that are supporting the training of future teachers in Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), primary, secondary and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in 11 Southern African countries. Through Teacher Education Change Projects (T-learning projects), teacher educators and student teachers work together and engage with locally relevant environment and sustainability challenges and concerns, and learn how to co-engage these and find alternatives, practicing ethics of care.  Valuable lessons which contribute to policy engagement and change, addressing global, regional and national sustainability challenges have been learned from these Change Projects seeding a ‘bottom up’ approach to ESD policy engagement in SADC countries.  Through this T-learning change project model, the Sustainability Starts with Teachers programme supports teacher educators to prepare future teachers for teaching sustainability across the curriculum, using a whole-school and whole institution approach which involves the entire school community and facilities in sustainability practices.

UNESCO also works with education and sustainable development government partners to ensure that the Education for Sustainable Development is integrated at policy and practice level. The purpose is to engage policy actors and educational leaders in capacity-building programme activities in countries as a way of advocating for Education for Sustainable Development integration into policies and leadership activities in teacher/TVET education.  A SADC Regional Strategic Framework for ESD was developed through contributions from the SST programme, which was adopted by SADC Education Ministers. Now many SADC countries are developing their ESD strategies and action plans.

With funding support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the programme has been implemented in 11 countries in SADC including Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 2019; Lesotho, South Africa and Zambia in 2020; Eswatini, Malawi and Tanzania in 2021; and Angola and Mozambique in 2022. From 2019 until 2023, the project involved 180 institutions and 520 teachers and teacher education, reaching a total of 98240 community members through the change projects 

The Sustainability Starts with Teachers Programme has been implemented by UNESCO ROSA, in partnership with Rhodes University’s Environmental Learning Research Centre, initially with support from the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) and with some support from the Swedish International Centre for Education for Sustainable Development (SWEDESD) based at Uppsala University in Sweden.  A strong team of regional reference group members from universities across southern Africa provided contextual guidance and support for the SST programme across countries. 

Relevant links

Sustainability Starts with teachers website

Sustainability Starts with teachers resources

T-learning for Teacher Educators article 

Education for Sustainability: Change projects in Southern Africa

Sustainability Starts with Teachers Final Report