Skills development for sustainability in the VET context: the Green Wave Project and its innovative pedagogical-didactic model

This contribution focuses on some results of the project Erasmus+“Con- structing a Green Wave in VET—A New SDG Perspective”. This project aligns with the priorities of the new Erasmus + program for environmental sustainability and UN objective 4.7, which aims to guarantee that all students acquire the knowledge and skills which are necessary to promote sustainable development as well as global citi- zenship. The final output of the project is the creation of a common pedagogical and didactic model to teach sustainability in Vet schools across the European countries involved in the project. The Green Wave VET project aims to explore and improve the integration of sustainable education in Professional and Technical Training (VET) contexts. Focusing on how the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be implemented in construction and education sector. University of Bari, in partic- ular, to elaborate the PDM, focused on three main actions: (1) mapping existing educational approaches about sustainability in VET contexts and the analysis of emerging needs; (2) the understanding of how VET contexts promote sustainable education; (3) exploring ways to work effectively with the 17 Sustainable Develop- ment Goals (SDG), especially in the construction building sectors. The PDM also bases its innovative character on one hand, stimulating the development of critical and creative-constructive skills to face the new challenges of sustainability always placing students at the center of learning process; on the other hand, offering an innovative pedagogical-didactic model for teachers, aimed not only at the creation of new contents relating to sustainability but also at the development, in a metacog- nitive sense, of the pre-conditions that allow us to think and build sustainability, for both poles of the educational relationship, students and teachers: in this model the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) on one hand, the head-hands-heart framework on the other hand, are therefore addressed and developed, intended precisely as struc- tural pre-conditions that further allow the development of the skills and competencies in sustainability.