Republican seminar-training "Sustainable Development Goals in Geography Education"

On October 16, 2023, a 5-day national training seminar "Sustainable Development Goals in Geography Education" began at the Institute of Natural Sciences and Geography of Abai KazNPU. The aim of the event is to help teachers of this subject to master the knowledge and skills necessary to introduce the basics of the content of the Sustainable Development Goals in the process of geographical education.

The training workshop is organised in a hybrid form (offline and online). Listeners are school teachers, university professors, masters and doctoral students, future teachers from all over Kazakhstan.

A.T. Kulsarieva, Vice-Rector for Strategy, Internationalisation and Digitalisation of Abai KazNPU, made a welcoming speech. She noted the importance of SDGs in solving global problems of mankind and the role of the Institute of Natural Sciences and Geography in education for sustainable development and assistance in Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, QS, UI Green Metric.

K.D.Kaimuldinova, Director of the Institute of Natural Science and Geography, spoke about the Sustainable Development Goals in Geography Education. She focused the attention of the audience on the current trends in education and technology for a sustainable future and emphasised why geography is able to cover all 17 SDGs. She also detailed the priority research areas on which the Institute`s scientists are working, including 9 projects in the field of sustainable development funded by MSHE RK.

On SDG 4 "Quality Education" S.J.Zeinolla, Director General of "Teacher`s Lab" made a presentation. She noted that education is the central SDG that allows achieving many other goals, for example, it helps to reduce inequalities (including gender inequalities). "In addition," Saule Zhanatovna emphasised, when people can get a quality education, they can break out of the cycle of poverty. Education also helps people around the world to lead healthier and more sustainable lifestyles and finally, education is fundamental in fostering tolerance between people and contributes to a more peaceful society."

Next, leading expert of the Sustainable Development Goals Secretariat of the Institute of Economic Research A.J.Abuov made a presentation on "Kazakhstan`s progress in achieving the SDGs and challenges for the future", which particularly interested future geography teachers: the presentation contained many examples of ways to achieve the SDGs in the regions of Kazakhstan.

The organisers of the training - Candidate of Geography A.V.Bely, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Geography and Ecology N.D.Shakirova and Deputy Director for Science and International Cooperation K.K.Muzdybaeva - reported on SDG-1 "Eradicate Poverty", SDG-2 "Eradicate Hunger", SDG-3 "Health and Wellbeing" and SDG-5 "Gender Equality". The speakers spoke in detail about the objectives of these SDGs, about the situation in the world and in Kazakhstan, about the measures taken to achieve them, and also gave recommendations in which sections of geography and how these Sustainable Development Goals can be studied.
Each presentation was followed by interaction with the audience, question and answer sessions, and at the end of the first day of the workshop-training the trainees took a "Quiz of the Day" test.