Active citizenship regarding climate change is a central component of addressing and combating the unprecedented environmental crisis currently unfolding, both globally and locally as evident by the EU’s Green Deal and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Meanwhile, the practice of deliberative skills seems to be limited in more traditionally technical and practical fields, such as Agriculture and Engineering. This deficiency is detrimental since these subjects are directly related to both the causes of and the innovative and sustainable solutions to environmental degradation.
Specifically, students of Vocational Education and Training (VET) schools would largely benefit from an increase in the specificity of their education on environmental sustainability and from the introduction of education on deliberative democracy principles. Such resources and tools are integral in ‘green’ occupations and in the advocacy for sustainable development practices.
As a result, the GreenVETers project aims to embed the democratic principles of citizen deliberation (CD), engagement and deliberative democracy within VET Agriculture and Engineering courses. The project’s innovative open educational resources and activities will achieve these aims within European countries and beyond.
The project’s General Objectives are the following:
- To improve the deliberative quality of public participation by producing an innovative, vocation-specific course which embeds CD and the Green Deal for sustainable development
- To offer VET educators and learners opportunities to engage in knowledge exchange and informed discussion about CD in VET Agriculture and Engineering courses
- To strengthen VET schools’ contribution to reaching the aims of the EU’s Green Deal in relevant fields
- To enhance the democratic competencies of VET educators and students to advocate for the ‘green’ transformation of their vocational fields.
The intellectual outputs of GreenVETers will be the following:
- The Handbook on the Green Deal and Citizen Deliberation which will introduce the concept of citizen deliberation and deliberative democracy for meeting the Green Deal’s objectives.
- The Pedagogical Guide: ‘Citizen engagement and deliberative democracy for climate action in VET schools’ which will help educators understand the pedagogical benefits of operationalizing CD to tackle climate change in certain professions.
- The Online Training Course on Citizen Deliberation and the Green Deal for VET educators in Agriculture & Engineering which will provide vocation-specific drivers and potential for innovation and sustainability in Agricultural and Engineering practices through exercising CD.
- The Report on “The Way Ahead: A Collection of Good Practices”, which will include video testimonials and graphics after the target groups will have engaged in practical Socratic seminars with environmental policymakers.