Tools for Green Career Learning in Schools
Teaching/career learning programmes for teachers and counsellors in lower and upper secondary schools – the students will create a social media campaign (SoMe) or brochure about an optional education in light of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal.
Inspiration for the tool
- UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Career learning
- Master’s thesis “The Globe and Career” (Ruud 2024, University of South-Eastern Norway)
Rationale. Why is this necessary?
In recent years, the field of career guidance has had an overall focus on sustainability. For career counsellors in the school system, overarching incentives such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, NOU2016:7 Career guidance for individuals and society and the Overall part – values and principles for primary and secondary education have all focused attention on sustainable development in society. During the years 2022 and 2023, various national and local career guidance conferences had sustainability as an overarching theme, and the online forum for career counsellors, Veilederforum.no, had a series of articles focusing on sustainable career guidance throughout 2023. Several career researchers are now arguing for a more sustainable focus, and one of the Nordic pioneers in “green” career guidance, Peter Plant, has called for a paradigm shift to establish a sustainable career guidance field. With inspiration from the overall incentives, the career guidance conferences, the articles and Plant, the career learning program “The Globe and the Career” has been designed.
Objectives
- At the end of the activity, participants will:
- gain an overall understanding of the fact that the green shift is pervasive throughout their working lives
- learn to explore educations and careers in light of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
- learn to do research about education on their own
- gain knowledge about different industries and educations
- apply critical thinking to the sources they use
Resources. What is needed to implement it?
- PC / phone
- UN Sustainable Development Goals
- University websites, education guides and/or search engines for education (preferably use local search engines), e.g.: https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/vocational-education-and-training
Activities
The studens can start from an education they themselves are curious about and find answers to the questions below. When the students do research, it is important that they apply critical thinking to evaluate the sources they use.
- At which educational institutions can you take the education?
- What are the Admission Requirements?
- How many years does the education take?
- Look at the study plan for the education, what types of subjects do you have to go through?
- What job opportunities does this education provide?
- What sustainability goals can this education contribute to?
- Describe how this education can contribute to achieving various sustainability goals.
Individual assignment – The answers the students find will be used to create a SoMe campaign or a brochure. The headline will be “The planet and the career – how [name of education] can contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.” Sources should be provided as part of the submission!
Session 2 – Presentations of the SoMe campaigns / brochures
Reflections and summaries about sustainable career opportunities, for example through discussion in small groups of 3-4 students:
- What is the most important thing they take with them after the presentations of how the various educations can contribute to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals?
- How will sustainability affect students’ future career choices?
Expansion activities
Alternative 1: The teacher can make sure that several educations and professions are covered through the programme so that the students gain an understanding of the breadth of working life
Alternative 2: students can choose to explore educations and professions based on their interests in light of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
- Incorporate a reflection on career values into the program. Guide students through a discussion or activity where they identify and explore their personal career values, and help them understand how these values influence career choices and decisions.
- Incorporate a reflection on critical thinking as part of this program by helping students question their ideas or the ideas of others.
- Prize for best SoMe campaign / brochure
- Keep in mind that the list of questions is not exhaustive—feel free to expand on it or encourage students to raise their own questions during the activity.
- Company visits or visits from fields of study that focus on sustainability
Reflection / consolidation of learning
- Encourage peer feedback to promote discussion and different perspectives.
- Present the SoMe campaigns/brochures to each other in class
- After quality assurance from the teacher/advisor, the campaigns can be shared with more students at the school or the school’s own SoMe pages, so that more students learn about how different educations can contribute to achieving the UN’s sustainability goals
- Reflection tasks afterwards: These can include questions like: What did you learn about the connection between education and the UN’s sustainability goals? What would you do differently next time? How has this activity influenced your own educational or career thinking?
- Follow-up of the topic of sustainability in individual career conversations