From Capacity Building to Local Action: The Journey of the FUTE Project
By Sari Havu-Nuutinen (UEF), Iipinge Sacky (UNAM), & Rehema Mwakabenga (DUCE)
As the Future Teacher Education for Sustainable Development (FUTE) project reaches its conclusion, it is a good moment to look back on a three-year journey that connected teacher educators and student teachers in Finland, Namibia, and Tanzania around a shared question: how can teacher education prepare future teachers to respond to sustainability challenges in meaningful, locally relevant ways? From 2024 to 2026, FUTE created a collaborative space for learning, redesigning practice, innovation, testing ideas, and building relationships across institutions in the Global North and Global South, as reflected below.
A shared starting point
Coordinated by the University of Eastern Finland, the project brought together the University of Turku, the University of Namibia, and Dar es Salaam University College of Education. Although the educational systems and local contexts differed, the partners shared an ambition to strengthen the conceptual, methodological, and pedagogical competence needed to foster Education for Sustainable Development into teacher education curriculum and pedagogy. The work was organized in three connected cycles: interactive training, the redesign of teacher education courses, and the practical application of learning through student teachers’ local mini projects.
Building a common language for sustainability
Through a professional development workshop, teacher educators with peer support had a chance to explore the SDGs and ESD from multiple perspectives. Sustainability was approached not as a separate topic, but as a way of thinking that connects environmental, social, cultural and economic questions. Discussions across countries made visible both common concerns, local expertise and contextual differences. This dialogue helped the project community develop a shared language while respecting the knowledge and priorities emerging from each partner institution. We would like to thank all key experts for providing their expertise for these workshops!
From knowledge to practice
In sustainable development issues knowledge matter but is not enough. The project also provided an arena from shared learning to institutional practice. Teacher educators worked in small teams, peer mentoring groups to analyse and redesign courses, identify where sustainability was already present, and consider where it needed to be made more explicit. This required more than adding new content. It meant examining learning outcomes, teaching methods, materials, assessment, cross-cutting issues, and the relationship between prescribed university curriculum and the realities of schools and communities. The process encouraged educators to select participatory and inquiry-oriented approaches that could help student teachers connect global sustainability goals with local needs. We wish all the best to our colleagues who have started to look at their teaching more through lenses of ESD and thank them for their commitment!
Learning in practice and across borders
The final phase, the third cycle, brought the project’s ideas into practice. Student teachers applied their learning during teaching practice and through small, action-oriented sustainability projects developed with schools and local communities. These mini-projects created opportunities to investigate real concerns, collaborate with others, and reflect on the effects of practical action. Project exchanges and mobility between Finland, Namibia, and Tanzania added another layer of learning: participants encountered different educational environments, compared approaches, and brought new questions back to their home institutions. Published reflections from the project show how inclusion, linguistic and cultural diversity, community participation, and hands-on learning became central to understanding sustainability within a specific context. We appreciate the work done by our teacher students and their supervisors during the teacher training in the schools!
Why does this all matter?
With the formal project period now complete, FUTE’s most important outcome is not a final event or a single product. Just as importantly, the project demonstrated the value of reciprocal partnership. Expertise did not travel in only one direction: each country and institution contributed perspectives that challenged assumptions and enriched the collective understanding of sustainable teacher education and education overall. We wish that we all keep these results alive: to continue using and refining the approaches, to share them within and beyond the partner institutions, and to support future teachers in turning sustainability from an abstract goal into everyday educational practice.
Student and staff mobility was a particularly important part of the FUTE partnership. The several mobility periods from South to North, vice versa and between South-South enabled participants to learn within different educational and cultural contexts, exchange expertise, and reflect together. For students, the visits opened new perspectives on teaching and learning in an international context, and local sustainability challenges, while staff mobility supported joint planning, peer learning, and the development of shared practices. Most importantly, meeting and working together in person strengthened equity, trust, reciprocity, and long-term collaboration between the partner institutions. Thanks to the students and colleagues for the visits and Finnish National Agency for Education and Ministry of Foreign Affairs for financing our journey!
The FUTE project may be concluding, but the work it has advanced is only beginning. Our partnership will turn the next page, and work continues. Thank you, Kiitos, Tangi unene, Asante sana
Sari Havu-Nuutinen, Professor, leader of the consortium, University of Eastern Finland
Sacky M. Iipinge, Professor, country leader, University of Namibia
Rehema Mwakabenga, Senior lecturer, country leader, University of Dar Es Salaam, College of Education