WP3 Future curriculum, education and training system

Future curriculum, education and training system

Lead Partner: Norwegian University of Life Sciences

NextFOOD project studies and further develops agrifood and forestry curricula. These curricula focus on sustainability challenges at various scales: local (e.g. social inclusion, gender issues, environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, resilience); regional (e.g. food security); and global (e.g. trade, climate change). Curricula also focus on empowering actors to mitigate these challenges and, thus, encourage agrifood system change to reach goals of sustainability and food equity.

In WP3 synthesises and analytically generalises data from the inventory of skills in WP 1 and from the case studies as managed by the principal contributors in WP2, and feed the newly gained understanding back to those designing cases to support further case development. The curriculum development at this aggregated level will follow the steps of the NextFOOD’s action research strategy cyclically throughout the course of the project:

Synthesize existing curricula in the field, including those analysed in WP1. This includes data on educational approaches, learning goals, and program assessment procedures. Further input will be obtained from the case studies managed in WP2.
Envision, design and develop future curricula, including course structure, content and methods assumed to foster learning to enable the transition to more sustainable agrifood systems.
Identify key issues and forces supporting or hindering replacement of current curricula with ones effectively supporting the transition to more sustainable agrifood systems.
Make action plans for implementation of new curricula.
Implement newly developed curricula in the cases.
Evaluate the impact of the new curricula on students’ understanding and competence. This occurs throughout the course and includes assessment of student performance, as well as gathering feedback from students and teachers.

Task 3.1. Create an overall framework to assess and improve the current educational approaches of involved cases

Task 3.2. Training of the NextFOOD educational approaches in the selected cases

Task 3.3. Evaluate the impact of the new curricula on students’ understanding and competence.