International Ethics Teachers’ Training Course, UNESCO

For the first time in Sri Lanka, an “Ethics Teachers” training course was held from 20th – 24th of February 2017. This was delivered jointly by UNESCO office in Jakarta and the Institute for Research and Development, Sri Lanka, to advance quality ethics education by building professional capacities of ethics teachers in the country and the wider South Asian region. The course was hosted by the Sri Lanka Foundation, Colombo.

The course was based on one week training module developed by UNESCO in collaboration with the global experts in ethics education. The training module contained the following key components:

Global Perspective on Ethics Teaching: trends, challenges and opportunities
The UNESCO Core Curriculum as a tool for promoting quality ethics education
Ethics Teaching in Action: what and how to teach (a model lesson)
Ethics teaching and inter-faith dialogue: Sharing experiences in ethics teaching in different religious contexts
Classroom communication: pedagogy and psychology of ethics teaching
Simulated teaching presentations by participants followed by feedback from the Course instructors
The course participants included 30 local ethics teachers and 5 foreign participants representing India, Japan, Indonesia, Poland and South Africa.