UNESCO/UNITWIN Chair on the Interplay of Tradition and Innovation in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at Daugavpils University in cooperation by partnership with Baltic and Black Sea Consortium in Educational Research (BBCC) Network Universities, the Editorial Boards of JTES and DCSE journals, UNESCO Chair in Toronto in Reorienting Teacher Education Towards Sustainability and the Network on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability, the UNESCO Latvian National Commission, Riga Technical University, Urmia University in Iran, Japanese Society of ESD (JSESD), and Miyagi University of Education announce that the 15th BBCC/JTES International Conference on “Sustainable Development, Culture, and Education: Interplay of Tradition and Innovation for ESD” will take place at the Faculty of E-learning, Technologies, and Humanities, Riga Technical University in Latvia on November 16-18, 2017.

Host University:
Riga Tehnical University, Faculty of e-learning tehnologies and humanities

Held at Daugavpils University in 2003, the first conference on this theme focused on reorienting teacher education to address sustainability. During its first decade, the responsibility for organizing the conference was shared among JTES Editorial board members and BBCC members from Tallinn Pedagogical University (Estonia), Vechta University (Germany), University of Helsinki (Finland), University of Debrecen (Hungary), Anadolu University (Turkey), Daugavpils University (Latvia), UNESCO (France), Siauliai University (Lithuania), and University of Eastern Finland (Finland), Chelm (Poland), Riga (Latvia), and Konya in Turkey.

Conference Aims

Conference Aims BBCC/JTES International Conference “Sustainable Development, Culture, and Education: Interplay of Tradition and Innovation for ESD” will be held with the aim of deepening our understanding and interpretation of methodology from transdisciplinary perspectives and stakeholders’ approach for transformations to sustainability and investigations of social innovations for ESD. Identification of transdisciplinary issues and development strategies for the creation of social innovations for ESD in education, transdisciplinary research for ESD, and organization of transformations to sustainability in institutions are among the key expected outcomes of this conference. Hopefully, the conference will open the forum for addressing the challenges raised by UNESCO as stipulated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Global Action Programme (GAP).

Conference Themes

The 15th JTES/BBCC Conference will feature plenary presentations, paper sessions, workshops, and posters on ESD. The following themes which cover a wide spectrum of research areas as well as practices related to sustainable development are suggested and expected to be addressed throughout this event: (1) Exploration of transdisciplinarity in the context of sustainability and sustainable education; (2) The influence of transdisciplinarity on a quality development in institutions; (3) The development of social and culture innovations to support and promote sustainable education, teacher education, higher education, and sustainable science development. Submissions are welcome and appreciated on the following modes of participation and presentations:

• Presentations at plenary sessions by designated keynote speakers upon the invitation of the Scientific Committee of the conference.
• Paper sessions in 30 minutes for both presentation and questions. Each paper session will have a chair person. Dissemination of handouts is highly appreciated.
• Workshops which are to provide training and hands-on experience in the areas of research, methods, interventional programmes, community practices, youth and similar initiatives. The length of the workshops will range between 60 and 120 minutes depending on their scale and scope.
• Posters where scientific work is presented in a graphical format. Maximum poster size should be 90 cm width by 190 cm height. In a poster presentation, at least one of the authors must be present.

The best papers selected by the scientific committee of the conference are to appear in the journals of Journal of Teacher education for Sustainability and Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education. (www.degruyter.com/view/j/jtes) (www.degryter.com/view/j/dcse).

The language of the conference will be English.

The deadline for registration are October 25, 2017.
Address: unescochair@du.lv
For any further information please contact: unescochair@du.lv