Research Newsletter - Issue 110: Open Research in Action
Open Pathways for Sustainability Citizenship: Collaborative Curation and Sharing of Teacher Professional Development Resources in the SYNAPSES Teacher Academy
Dr Margaret Farren, Dr Yvonne Crotty, Sean Manley
School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies
This research promotes the concept of Sustainability Citizenship as the ability of individuals and groups to think, plan and act for a sustainable future through values-driven, critical, and participatory engagement with real-world challenges. The research asks: How can openly accessible professional development and learning resources be effectively selected and shared to support teachers and school leaders in embedding Sustainability Citizenship across whole-school and open-school practices?
Based on evaluation criteria and a collaborative, multi-phase process, resources were selected across three task domains: (1) exemplary resources for Sustainability Citizenship, (2) sustainability-scientific literacy, and (3) effective learning environments. Over 100 curated resources are now available via the SYNAPSES Portal and used in international summer schools, teacher and school heads workshops across Europe.
Open Research Practices
Open research practices have shaped the evaluation, selection and dissemination of professional development resources to support Sustainability Citizenship in schools.
All resources curated through the project are either openly licensed (under Creative Commons) or shared with permission from the original creators. Extensive outreach was conducted across Europe to collaborate with a wide range of resource developers, many of whom granted permission to include their materials on the SYNAPSES Portal for teacher professional development and learning purposes.
An open method of selection and evaluation was applied, grounded in the real-world needs of teachers and school leaders identified through visionary workshops in partner countries. Evaluation rubrics and rationale were shared transparently among all partners, with evaluation forms and selection rationale remaining openly available to project stakeholders.
The open educational resources available on the SYNAPSES Erasmus+ Teacher Academy portal are available to use by a global audience.
Impact
Since the start of the project, the SYNAPSES Teacher Academy has engaged over 3,700 educators, including pre-service and in-service teachers and school leaders, through 111 local, national, and international training events in the two years of implementation. A cornerstone of this impact has been the availability of open-access resources to develop structured workshops based on programme learning outcomes, scaffolding progression from novice to expert levels of professional learning and knowledge.
Continuous Professional Development (CPD) workshops were co-designed to engage both teachers and school leaders in embedding Sustainability Citizenship through whole-school and open-school strategies. The approach has the potential to support inclusive, enquiry-led, challenge-based learning and other action-oriented approaches, aligning with ESD and GreenComp frameworks.
These tools are already informing national CPD programmes and being implemented successfully in school communities. The SYNAPSES Portal has received over 26,800 visits to date, with more than 100 open-access professional development resources actively used across Europe’s education systems.
The new Leaving Certificate Curriculum ‘Climate Action and Sustainable Development’ was introduced into post-primary schools in Ireland in September 2025. DCU, through the SYNAPSES project, supported teachers from Ireland to attend the international summer school in Marathon, Greece in July 2025. Building on our experience and on the success of the SYNAPSES Summer Schools of 2024 and 2025 , the SYNAPSES Summer School 2026 | ESIA will take place from 28th June - 3rd July 2026.
