EuroScitizen/EvoKE meeting: The importance of Socioscientific Issues and Evolution for Education for Sustainability

Join us in the beautiful city of Naples and be one of the participants of the EuroScitizen WG2 meeting on the links between evolution and Socioscientific Issues (SSI) and how these can be explored to promote education for sustainability.

By attending you will:

  • learn from other participants about the SSIs approach and how it can be used to address education for sustainability
  • discuss how knowledge on evolution can be used to inform decision making processes related with SSIs
  • work collaboratively in interdisciplinary and international groups to develop, implement and evaluate educational activities that explore SSIs from an evolutionary perspective
  • become part of the SSI transversal group in EuroScitizen

Sustainable development requires people to be able to work collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams to develop, implement and test solutions that allow them to address the needs of the present without compromising those from the future generations.

Many of the present day sustainability problems are complex, with no simple solutions, are widely discussed and often spark controversies, thus being good examples of SSI, that can be explored in classrooms to develop students’ skills for sustainable development.

But fostering sustainable development also requires people to be able to think over time to make, evaluate and use predictions of future impacts of present actions. For biology systems, this is strongly related to evolutionary processes.

In this meeting, we aim to contribute to education for sustainability. For that we will promote interdisciplinary group work to develop, implement and evaluate educational activities that explore SSI from an evolutionary perspective.

Join us in the beautiful city of Naples to accomplish this task!

Apply until 30th September 2022 here

Meeting program

Day 1 – 22nd October

10:00 – Welcome reception 

10:20 – Speed dating – activities’ brief presentation and discussion

11:30 – Coffee break

12:00 – Oral presentation by Dana Zeidler: “Learning Evolution through Socioscientific Issues: Design-Based Learning”

13:00 – Lunch

14:30 – Oral presentation by Patrícia Pessoa: Planning an SSI activity that explores evolution. What should we take into account?

15:00 – Hands on collaborative work: planning an SSI activity

16:30 – Coffee break

17:00 – World cafe – receiving feedback for the activity

18:30 – Enjoy Naples

Day 2- 23rd October

10:00 – Guided field trip to the DADOM Museum guided by Prof. Ferdinando Boero

11:00- Hands-on collaborative work: finishing the activities and discussing how and when to evaluate students’ learning outcomes.

12:30 – Report back and closing remarks

Evaluation criteria

CriteriaMaximumevaluation points
Current or future level of involvement of the participant in the EuroScitizen WGs and SSI group0.5
Contribution to participant’s professional development and future projects0.3
Balance (gender, career stage, country, participation of distinct institutions)0.2