Education Renewal in Times of Distress
LInk to the book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-56172-6
At last – the edited volume on ‘Whole School Approaches to Sustainability – Educational renewal in times of distress’ has come out. Together with co-editors, Birgitte Bjønness, Astrid Sinnes and Ingrid Eikeland, and managing editor Stine Marie FyskeHaraldsen, we have worked with authors from around the world to create this rich picture of principles, practices and prospects of school working more systemically and holistically with sustainability, rather than treating it like another subject to be added to an already overcrowded curriculum.
The book has been made Open Acess and all 24 (!) chapters can be downloaded for free thanks to a grant provided through the Dutch Government-Supported Programme for Learning for Sustainable Development (LvDO).
We wish to acknowledge Roel van Raaij who has been an advocate of Education for Sustainable Development, both nationally and internationally, from within the Dutch government for decades, and Ellen Leusink who facilitates and supports ESD through the LvDO program and paved the way for the open access.
We also want to acknowledge the Department of Educational Science at
the Norwegian Life Science University (NMBU led by Hans Erik Lefdal together with Akershus county municipality (the school district South of Oslo) for the support to establish and run the University—School partnership for the last 6 years or so, continuing to this
day. The partnership with schools, especially the collaboration with school
coordinators and principals, have supported the development of the Whole
School Approach through research and praxis. Without this foundation and
support, we would not have had the knowledge, time, and confidence to work
on this book.
Here is the link to the book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-56172-6
Transformative learning 
Dear Arjen Wals
I hope I find you well, you and your family. Send a big huge for all of you.
Congratulations for more one report, that I really want to read.
I would like to share with you that I would like to develop a post-doc project related to Education 2030- whole school approach, in order, to demonstrate in practice, How we could do in Portugal this kind of approach.
My background is Chemical Engineering – Quality and Environment (2003) and PhD in Science and Environmental Engineering (2012-2017), Aveiro University.
Since 2017 I’m in NGO – Association K-Evolution. Club Unesco – Education for Sustainability
My own experience in education for sustainable development has been with primary schools. In summary, I have been involved in school projects as:
1)EduMob- Education for Sustainable Mobility (year 2016-2017)
2) FAAZ- project – Environmental Tools of A to Z (2019-2020)
3) classes of School garden (mix of indoor and outdoor) ( 2024)
Projects with local authorities and communities:
1)THE PLACE project – joint transnational project with turkey partner related to Transforming the local food system in Portugal (Setubal and Palmela) with Local Authorities (2022-2023)
2) The Nature Women guardians (2023) – linked to Natural Parks ir order to engage women to protect their natural regions and promote sustainable development. Project promoted by Business as Nature (NGO).
Parallel I trained teatchers and educators in Education for Sustainable Development for Continued formation. We start with an introduction and we are in a project to develop another related to the Design of Whole School Approach based on the Territory.
So, I would like to develop research based on practice project related to these experience and concrete educations based on emerge chalenges.
I will send too a Portuguese Education University a propose to do a post-doc, and I think it is amazing that could be partnership with your reseach unit. To do this work I need to seach to a grant to funding this work.
If you have ideas to work together, please let me know.
Best regards
Alexandra Silva