The study was a part of a bigger research project carried out in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary with the financial support of the International Visegrad Fund. The main aim of the study was to identify opportunities and threats, obstacles and possibilities regarding the integration or strengthening of EG/ESD in teacher education. The project also aimed at developing recommendations to strengthen these initiatives.

In the research project, systemic perspective was adopted as the theoretical framework (Fereira et al. 2019). This approach is founded on several assumptions: (1) The primary research problem is recognised as a system, i.e. a set of identifiable elements connected by mutual relationships; (2) These elements form subsystems within the higher system; (3) The boundaries between the system and its environment are partially permeable; however, they make the identification of the system possible; (4) Each system acts purposefully, while the guiding principle is to maintain the status quo.

The research problem was defined as follows: What factors favour/contribute to or prevent the inclusion of GE in teacher education and training?

In the presentation we will focus on the results from the Polish case study, however we will place them in the Central European / the Visegrad Group context to highilight some commonalities and differences.

The research is situated in a participatory/activist research paradigm. Research is understood not as the creation of scientific knowledge by a researcher-expert, but as a process of co-creation of knowledge by the researchers and the researched and as a way of emancipating/empowering the researched. The researcher-researched relationship is active, dynamic and participatory. The aim of this type of research is both the aforementioned co-creation of knowledge and the development of practical solutions to social problems, developing the potential of groups involved in the research, strengthening commitment to problems relevant to the community. Hence, this research is often conducted in the field of social work, local environment organisation or community management, as well as in education, as exemplified by our project. To answer the research question we used an innovative qualitative research method known as Participatory Systems Mapping (Barbrook-Johnson, Penn 2021). A group of respondents was invited to attend a series of online workshops. During the first session, the participants were asked to prepare a mind map with their answers to the research question using Miro (www.miro.com). In the second workshop, participants worked collectively on a causal diagram showing the main links and cause-and-effect relationships between the factors they had identified in the first workshop. The workshops were conducted with two study groups that altogether comprised 11 people: four academics (who are both lecturers and researchers) representing four different universities (from four different cities); three practitioners representing three different NGOs (from two cities); two pedagogy students from the University of Warsaw (different programmes, part-time and full-time students); and two officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A representative of the Ministry of Education and Science was also invited but could not attend. The research team included Magdalena Kuleta-Hulboj, PhD, and Elżbieta Kielak (Olczak), a psychologist, an experienced educator and trainer in global and intercultural education.

Based on the study, the most important conclusions regarding the barriers and possibilities of developing GE in teacher education and training were formulated. The following primary obstacles were defined: - The current socio-political climate in Poland, where GE is considered to be a suspicious, controversial and highly politicised topic; - Reluctance of Ministry of Education to support GE - Lack of systemic solutions regarding the presence of GE in the teacher training standards and in the Polish Qualifications Framework; - Lack of structured and meaningful cooperation among the main stakeholders; - Lack of cooperation and an interdisciplinary approach among university faculties; - Overloaded core curriculum that largely ignores GE and offers no space for extra-curricular or cross-curricular topics; - Approaching GE at universities in terms of fun rather than ‘real’ education due to the applied methods (frequently perceived as ‘frivolous’ and ‘non-academic’). The respondents emphasised the following supporting factors: - Extremely rich offer of educational materials, methods and tools already in place; - Significant number of teachers trained to date; - Committed individuals who ‘smuggle’ GE into their own lessons, fight for its inclusion in the curricula, encourage others to get involved and create informal support networks; - More frequent presence of topics related to GE in pop culture and social media, which creates opportunities for the dissemination of this topic in Polish society (informal education) and changing the socio-political climate to a more favourable one; - GE’s potential as education towards values, whereby GE may be seen as a valuable contribution to school programmes of education and prevention of abuse. Some of the supporting and hindering factors proved to be common to all project countries, others -specific to Poland. However, in the project we were able to draw some common conclusions and recommendations which we intend to present at the conference.

- ANGEL (2021). Global Education Digest 2021. London: Development Education Research Centre, UCL Institute of Education. - Barbrook-Johnson P., Penn A. (2021). Participatory systems mapping for complex energy policy evaluation. ‘Evaluation’ 27(1): 57–79. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1356389020976153 - Fereira J.-A., Ryan L., Davis J., Cavanagh M., Thomaset J. (2019). Mainstreaming sustainability into pre-service teacher education in Australia. Canberra: Prepared by the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability for the Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. - Gierczyk M., D. Dobosz. (2016). Możliwości metodologiczne w badaniach problemów społecznych – perspektywa partycypacyjna. „Pedagogika Społeczna” 2(60): 151–165. - Grupa Zagranica. (2011). Raport z procesu międzysektorowego na temat edukacji globalnej [Report on the cross-sectoral process dedicated to Global Education]. Warsaw: Grupa Zagranica. - Piekarski J. (2017). Perspektywa uczestnicząca w badaniach empirycznych – zarys tematyczny. „Przegląd Badań Edukacyjnych (Educational Studies Review)” (2)25: 267–298. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/PBE.2014.030 - Singleton J. (2015). Head, heart and hands model for transformative learning: Place as context for changing sustainability values. „The Journal of Sustainability Education” 9.