The event “From compost to meta-competence” took place on February 24, 2021 from 3 pm to 5 pm, by using the online Classroom platform because in our locality the education takes place online.
The activity was carried out by the mathematics teacher Voinea-Axinte Costica in the 10th grade of high school in the online presence of five teachers from the school. Sustainability education is a prerequisite for post-crisis economic competitiveness COVID 19. Composting is a good excuse to motivate the study of STEM disciplines in the context of climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption.
Competence for sustainability, which will be increasingly in demand in the labor market, such as leadership, will be a meta-competence that includes both multidisciplinary knowledge and all classical transversal competencies. It is obvious that such competence cannot be learned in a course, but it must be trained throughout the education because some of the included competencies can be and it is more effective to be developed from an early age. In my teaching endeavor, I tried to develop environmental protection skills starting from learned notions to biology, geography, chemistry, mathematics, ecology but I took into account the fact that many students are from rural areas and have knowledge related to compost.
The webinar was the first step. In the other online webinars I will use interactive, collaborative, integrative methods, adapted to the age level, multiple intelligences, and different learning styles with the participation of fellow teachers of physics, chemistry, biology, and geography to present students specific notions of disciplines and curricular contents necessary for understanding. phenomena that take place in compost.
The theme of the webinar was one of the main objectives of creating a human resource that can develop a sustainable economy and communities. The approach uses innovative teaching techniques, teaching models such as integrative studies, project-based learning or problems, the main themes of the curriculum can be enriched with current themes of the planet and human life and approached through participatory methods that develop in children and young people the motivation to learning, transversal competences, including innovation, creativity, and independence in thinking necessary for sustainability competence.
Sustainability in education does not mean creating a separate course added to the topics of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, but it means including the key themes of sustainable development in everyday teaching and learning. Making compost is a good excuse to motivate the study of climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption. These webinars motivate and mobilize students and make them change their behavior and act for sustainable development.
My students were happy with the approach taken, they were actively involved, they shared their experience related to the subject of the webinar and they proved the desire to implement the studied notions.
Author: Voinea Axinte Costica
