THE RESULTS OF THE DECADE OF ESD IN RUSSIA AND OUR PERSPECTIVES

Dzyatkovskaya E.N., Doctor of Biol. Sciences, Professor,

Institute of Education Content and Teaching Methods, Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia

Summing up the results of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD), we distinguish two major events in Russia. Firstly, it is the development of the Concept of general ecological education for sustainable development (EESD) by the Scientific Council for Ecological Education at the Presidium of Russian Academy of Education (RAE) in 2010. The Concept develops the ideas of Academic N.N. Moiseev about EESD as a new, conceptual phase of ecological education in the 21st century. The EESD reveals the essence of environmental imperative and promotes ecological thinking and green behavior.

Secondly, the basic ideas of the Concept have been reflected in the new generation of national standards for public schools. Its goal is to ensure systematic work of school teachers for ESD and to teach pupils to learn, communicate and socialize for sustainable development of community in the 21st century. We hope that implementation of the current standard will actually increase the number of people who know about SD.

We list and other the most important results of the Decade in Russia.

They are - Annual Conferences of EDS and Summer Ecological Schools for Teachers which are held by the Laboratory of Ecological Education of the RAE on the shore of Lake Baikal;

the experimental training course for graduates of secondary school “Environment and sustainable development in Moscow” by prof. Jagodin G.A., etc.;

the experimental academic subject “Ecology and life Safety” for tenth graders, developed by Laboratory of ecological education of Russian Academy of Education for implementation of ESD recommendations;

the training package for primary and secondary school “Ecology in school learning” by E. Dzjatkovskaya that combines development of ecological thinking, self-monitoring and actions for SD based on archetypes of Russian mentality (it was recommended for schools by Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation);

development of partnership network of teachers on the platform of the Concept.

At the same time, promoting the ideas of ESD in schools meets with difficulties. Analysis of the problems can help to extract some lessons for the future.

Unfortunately, there is no significant impact of idea of ESD on education in the regular schools. Teachers have difficulties in mastering the educational standard. Most of them still don’t understand the meaning of sustainable development. There are no clear criteria of ESD for teachers as well. As for the conventional ESD indicators, they are more related to the organizational criteria for school than to educational criteria for the teachers. Furthermore, under the brand name of ESD, we often encounter projects, which do not relate to the ESD. And vice versa. We find teaching experience, which is valuable to the ESD, but its authors do not focus on these ideas.

So we need more effort to adapt the idea of SD to the Russian mentality.

First of all, there is the problem of translation of terms and texts of ESD at Russian language and adaptation them for a better understanding of their meaning. Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote: "Different languages - this is by no means different designations of the same things, but different visions of it" (Selected Works, 2000, p. 312). It is known that the English and Russian languages have different communicative strategy of interaction with the reader. Their phraseological units differ in stylistic relatedness and volume of subjective interpersonal capabilities.

In the Russian language the author more often turns to the use of subjective-interpersonal capacity, context, and unanswered rhetorical questions to express his attitude to be reported. English phraseological units are built mainly in the subjective-personal modality. In the Russian language, we find a finer description of the internal state and the experiences of man, which reflects his inner speech and the internal contradictions of the individual. Apparently, to promote the ideas of ESD in the Russian school is not enough to use the translated materials. They need scientific and literary refinement and improvement of their subjective-interpersonal capabilities.

In the second place, there is a problem of psychological perception of ideas ESD by schoolchildren and their parents. This is due to a deficit accents that reflect the vital needs of people, especially the national mentality, specific socio-economic development of the country, etc. in the texts of the ESD.

No less important is the fact that there are a lot of pedagogical problems of ESD. What is its educational content? How to integrate interdisciplinary ESD in school curricula, with its substantive organization of the educational process - the natural sciences, humanities, fine and technological subjects? How to adapt the development of foreign education in ESD at the Russian school, taking into account the specifics of the national curriculum?

In fact, we are talking about the insufficient elaboration of didactic basis of implementation of ESD in Russia. So we think that the key task of ESD – is to translate social and political meanings of ESD at professional pedagogical language. We all need the unified semantic field – as the basis of unity and mutual enrichment by multicultural content ESD. To achieve unity of content ESD we need not terminological uniformity, but unity of understanding the meanings of key provisions of the ESD. We need multicultural pedagogical glossary ESD-based languages of UNESCO.

At the same time it should take into account the specifics of national education systems - its educational paradigm, conceptual teaching apparatus and educational traditions.

Solution of this problem is closely related to another one. We do not have enough information about analogues ESD ideas in the national culture and national ideals of education. For example, in the Russian folk tale "Geese and Swans" we find a formula for survival and sustainable development: "Protection of nature " + "Social Partnership" + "Green Economy". But folklore not used in the ESD in Russia.

Another pedagogical problem which retards the practical steps in ESD is related to interdisciplinary, integrated (POSTNONCLASSICAL) character of ESD. Traditional schooling is based on the academic disciplines. But the structure of the interdisciplinary content has not yet taken shape. What are its integrating, penetrating through all school subjects, didactic units? How to combine them with didactic units of school subjects content (concepts, laws, theories, actions)?

And what should be the relationship of ecology, economy and social issues together inside the ESD? And - a very important question - what kind of ecological education are we talking about?

In Russian secondary school there are three lines of ecological education simultaneously. Unfortunately, they do not differ in name, although have different goals, develop different kinds of activities, even use the same terms in a different sense. Here they are – training in the field of nature protection (1), learning in various greening spheres of culture (science, literature, etc.) (2), POSTNONCLASSICAL integrated ecological education for SD (EESD) (3). Every time when we mention about ecological education we must ask ourselves - what kind of ecological education I'm talking about.

EESD teaches us to look for relationship between the environment quality and social and economic problems, to find the contradictions of natural and social, to identify ways and conditions of their compatibility for SD on the base of environmental imperatives (as for the other components of ESD, respectively, on the basis of economic laws or social patterns).

Within the DESD we have made important steps to incorporate an educational technology of EESD to the content of school subjects. Usually ecological material is added to the school subject content. And it increases its volume, spend class time and causes dissatisfaction of teachers. We offered to go the other way – when the existing subject content receives no additional volume, but a new sense - meanings for sustainable development.

These meanings we called “green axioms”. “Green axioms” as semantic units of EESD are pedagogically adapted presentation of the environmental imperative. They are formulated in a unified manner that is understandable to all subjects - in the form of metaphors, as "carts for transportation of meanings" (“ecological boomerang”, “environmental trampoline”, “green clock”, etc). Based on them, we laid down the moral principles of actions for ESD - principles of all types and areas of human activity which are formed by any educational subject. Gradually, from the primary to elder school, "green axioms" and principles of ESD are filled with scientific and cultural content.

“Green axioms” allow opening the new values of the content of the subject being studied. On the basis of “green axioms” and the principles of action for sustainable development everyone is able to understand how to make a personal contribution to the ESD with a help of different types of activity at school, at home, on vacation, etc.

The further development of the theory of EEDS and the international exchange of the results of such work – is the problem after '14. In turn, we will develop a national educational model EESD for different stages of school education continuity with pre-school and vocational education. It will focus on the broad interdisciplinary cooperation for the sustainable development on the base of “green axioms” and principles of actions for SD.