Workshop in Hangzhou, China

9—10 May 2019, Dr Margarita Pavlova and Christy Chan conducted a workshop for the regional training of TVET practitioners, TVET teacher educators and government officials on green skills, their inclusion in curriculum for TVET students and TVET teacher education. TVET leaders from 12 CPSC member countries: Thailand, Malaysia, Nepal, India, the Philippines, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Maldives and Bangladesh took part in training. This training was a part of the bigger regional workshop on Green Skills and New Economy for Sustainable Development organized by the Colombo Plan Staff College (CPSC) and UNEVOC Center, Zhejiang Technical Institute of Economics, China in Hangzhou.

Our workshop focused on the inclusion of generic green skills training in the curriculum and we shared our approach for using the developed teaching and learning resources. The resources were developed by the UNEVOC Center (Hong Kong). In addition, suggestions were made regarding how a teacher-training program could be structured and organized for the interested countries were discussed with participants.

The workshop was focused on issues of greening TVET, which included the conceptualization of green skills, the challenges and strategies for greening TVET, as well as current practice and curriculum design for generic green skills development.Following the introduction of the resources created for supporting generic green skills development, TVET representatives from different countries in the Asia Pacific were divided into three groups. The groups engaged with sample resources on a green industry concept and a case study on green buildings, and then reflected on how to include these resources into current teaching and learning practices in their countries.This workshop provided a good opportunity for TVET trainees to understand the importance of greening the TVET curriculum for the purpose of green economic restructuring and sustainable development. The workshop also provided an example of how to develop teaching and learning resources to facilitate students’ generic green skills development through a student-cantered approach.