Personal Learning Objectives

The goal of this activity is to enable yourself to develop personalized and actionable objectives for implementing sustainability practices within your educational institutions. By completing this activity, you will identify your knowledge gaps, necessary skills, and application strategies to effectively promote and integrate sustainability principles across your school’s curriculum, operations, and community engagement. This self-reflective process empowers you to align your professional responsibilities with sustainable development goals, recognize their influence as change agents, and strategically allocate resources to support environmental education initiatives.

We invite you to create a Word document that you save in a dedicated folder on your computer for this professionalization course. In this Word document you can take notes on lessons learned and ideas for your school. These notes will later on be used to draft your Green Action Plan.

It is helpful to already structure your document following the structure of this course.

You can copy this structure into your document:

• Personal Learning Objectives
• Goals Concepts and Dilemmas of SC
• Creating Robust School Policies

Think through the following steps and make short notes on which goals you can identify with.

1. Objective definition
   • Knowledge goal: List specific concepts or areas in sustainability you aim to understand (e.g., renewable energy systems, circular economy principles, sustainable development goals).
   • Skill development: Identify particular skills you wish to acquire (e.g., carbon footprint assessment, sustainability auditing, project management for green initiatives).
   • Application goals: Specify how you intend to apply this knowledge in your school (e.g., curriculum integration, student-led sustainability projects, eco-friendly campus initiatives).
   • Connection to current role: Align your learning objectives with your responsibilities as a school head (e.g., sustainable policy development, teacher training in environmental education, green procurement).
2. Understanding personal responsibility – Role in education
   • Recognize your influence in promoting sustainability within your institution and community.
   • Commit to being an advocate for sustainable education practices.
3. Engagement with stakeholders
   • Plan how you will engage with teachers, students, and the community to promote awareness of sustainability and environmentally responsible practices.
4. Professional options – Institutional development
   • Explore opportunities to integrate sustainability into your school’s programs and policies.
   • Identify potential collaborations with local organizations or experts (e.g., workshops with environmental NGOs, guest lectures from sustainability professionals).
5. Resource allocation
   • Assess resources (time, budget, materials) necessary to support sustainability education.
   • Plan how to acquire or reallocate resources to better support learning and teaching activities related to sustainability.

Would you like to contribute to the research of SYNAPSES? Follow this link to fill out the ‘Entry Questionnaire’ , for educators starting their SYNAPSES Journey: https://www2.iep.edu.gr/lime2/index.php/282179?lang=en

Note: the survey is made for teachers, but contains questions relevant to school heads.