ECF4CLIM

What is ECF4CLIM?

The acronym ECF4CLIM comes from the full project name A EUROPEAN COMPETENCE FRAMEWORK FOR A LOW CARBON ECONOMY AND SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH EDUCATION. The ECF4CLIM project aims to develop education in order to advance sustainable way of life.

The international web site of the project: https://www.ecf4clim.net/

The funding of the project is part of the European Green Deal, which forms a European roadmap to towards a greener future. In collaboration with schools, students and teachers, the ECF4CLIM project aims to construct a description of the sustainability competencies as part of a European Competence Framework.

In addition to University of Jyväskylä, the ECF4CLIM includes partners from Spain, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Hungary. The project members in FIER are associated with the JYU.Wisdom- School of Resource Wisdom in University of Jyväskylä.

Research Group (FIER)

Hannu L. T. Heikkinen (PI)
Terhi Nokkala (co-PI)

Anna Lehtonen
Niina Mykrä

Project duration

1.10.2021 – 30.9.2025

Funding

EUR 4.9 million
FIER share EUR 1 million

^{This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 10103650.}

What do sustainability competences mean?

What kind of sustainability competences should education foster?
What kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes do individuals and communities need to move towards a more sustainable way of life?
We aim to design, test and validate a description of sustainability competences as part of the European Competence Framework, ECF.

The project builds sustainable practices

to empower the educational community to take action against climate change and towards sustainable development and
to promote a change towards a more ecologically, socially and economically sustainable future

Project aim and approach

The project adopts a multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary and participatory approach, which makes use of crowdsourcing and co-designing best practices. Applying a novel hybrid participatory approach, rooted in participatory action research and citizen science, ECF4CLIM co-designs the ECF in selected schools and universities, by:

elaborating an initial ECF, supported by crowdsourcing of ideas and analysis of existing ECFs.
We use GreenComp (JRC2022) as a springboard in this work.
- EN-GreenComp.pttx
- ES-GreenComp.pttx
- PT-GreenComp.pttx
- RO-GreenComp.pttx
establishing the baseline of individual and collective competences, as well as environmental performance indicators;
implementing practical, replicable and context-adapted technical, behavioural, and organisational interventions that foster the acquisition of competences;
evaluating the ability of the interventions to strengthen sustainability competences and environmental performance; and
validating the ECF.