Sustainable Teachers: A Case Study of the @TeachSDGs Global Teacher-Led Network

• In Event: Teacher-Led Networked Educational Organizing in the United States: Invited Session

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the work of @TeachSDGs, a teacher-driven network that is interested in promoting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). The SDGs are meant to build upon the U.N.’s eight Millenium Development Goals that were in effect from 2000-2015. The seventeen SDGs have 169 targets addressing a broad range of sustainable development issues, and are meant to be reached by 2030. The goals address five key areas: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. Although the SDGs are non-binding, 193 member U.N. countries agreed upon the goals in 2015 (United Nations Development Programme, 2015) .
Given that governments are not legally obligated to meet the goals, teachers have a role to play in educating about and advocating for the SDGs. The SDGs are not, however, directly a part of most local and national curricula, and it can thus be challenging for individual teachers to determine how to integrate the SDGs into teaching and learning in their classrooms. Social media, such as Twitter, provide a way for educators to connect with colleagues who share similar interests and needs (Author & Author, 2014; Lord & Lomicka, 2014; Wesely, 2013). The goal of @TeachSDGs is to help teachers to collaborate as they imagine, create, evaluate, and reinvent learning opportunities for themselves and their students towards more green, healthy, and sustainable classrooms and schools. In addition to the @TeachSDGs Twitter account, there is an teachSDGs website and a widely-used #teachSDGs hashtag.
@TeachSDGs uses the lens of sustainability, as defined by the United Nations (1987), to shape their approach and practices. In addition, @TeachSDGs draws upon the Green Schools Movement’s concept of teacher stewardship (see http://greenschoolsnationalnetwork.org/green-print/). @TeachSDGs prioritizes the notion of participant-driven inquiry and collaboration that is also a core part of other teacher-led movements such as EdCamp unconferences and Teacher-Led Schools. @TeachSDGs helps educators interested in the SDGs connect virtually and through face-to-face events, and supports the sharing of curriculum and teaching materials related to the SDGs.
In this paper, the author illustrates how @TeachSDGs promotes teacher networks that exhibit elements of ecological balance: diversity, nested systems, balance, local activity, global interdependence. The author draws upon face-to-face and digital qualitative data from advising conversations between @TeachSDGs colleagues, educator convenings, conference proceedings, and documentary narratives developed by @TeachSDG members. Findings highlight how the practice of disseminating enriched sustainability narratives through digital forums enlivens decision-making processes of @TeachSDG teachers and their colleagues and the ways in which the narratives provide frameworks that can be modified in a [re-]cyclical manner. This study has implications for practitioners who seek to build local and global professional networks and are interested in the ways in which sustainability can be used as a framework to drive professional learning and teaching. It also has implications for scholars that seek more examples and information about the dynamics of teacher-led social movements.

Author

• Gamal Sherif