Abstract:

The worsening environmental problems in the recent decades, in combination with the difficulty to create declarations and laws to address the growing ecological crisis, bring to the forefront the need for change of the existing attitudes in Environmental Education (ED) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Since the academic year 2011-2012, the introduction, for the first time, of ED / ESD in the curriculum of public primary schools in Cyprus, as part of a broader Education Reform, presented the combatant teachers with a fait accompli, which gave them additional responsibilities and duties. Despite the fact that this initiative was promoted by the government of the Republic of Cyprus, it is important to mention that most of the teachers never received any substantial and relevant training before the implementation of the new curricula, neither had received any education on these topics during their university studies.

In this context, this paper proposes an «in-situ» training program for primary school teachers. This partially experiential program is consistent with the principles of adult education, since it takes into consideration the potential ability of the teachers to reflect critically and their tendency to self-determination and active participation in the learning process. The program has been evaluated according to the Stufflebeam evaluation model (CIPP), one of the most popular and recognized models for the evaluation of educational programs.

Following the four evaluation phases of the above model, the training program is created upon the evaluation of its framework (Context), with emphasis on defining the target population, exploring its educational needs and designing the objectives of the training. Then, we proceed to the input evaluation, with emphasis on setting timelines, strategies and procedures for the implementation of the program, with reference to both literature and practice. The phase of the process evaluation has mainly a formative nature and assesses the actions and activities in a joint discussion among all involved people. During the final phase of the evaluation (Product evaluation), we formulate the criteria that demonstrate advantages and disadvantages of implementing the program, always in relation to the objectives set and the previous phases of the evaluation model.

Keywords:

Lifelong Learning, Primary Education, Cyprus, teachers training, Environmental Education, Education for Sustainable Development.