Today I visited the former Indan Residential School in Kaloops, British Columbia, Canada. It is now being used by first nations for various purposes. This school, and other residential schools, for aboriginal children were a tragedy for the first nations culture. Children were taken from there families and put together in the residential schools were they had to assimilate in the Canadian (western christian) culture. Residential schools were created at the end of the 19th century and existed until the 1970s. Various first nations people are actively working on retaining their cultures and are negotiating terms for self-determination, land rights and natural resource ownership. It is a harsh struggle that cannot be missed when visiting beautiful British Columbia.

Dr Renate Wesselink of ECS presented the ProDo program (on Professional Development of Teachers in Green Education) at the Annual Convention of the AERA (American Educational Research Association) in Vancouver, Canada. The emphasis in the presentation was on demand articulation, which was done using a Group Decision Room. Representatives of the green knowledge system were invited to suggest research themes, and a set of pre-defined research themes was rated and discussed. A distinction was made between representatives of green education institutions and knowledge centers which offer consultancy to these institutions. Based on the qualitative and quantitative results priorities were set for the research programme, which is now being implemented.

On April 3, 9:00-10:00hrs Jifke Soll will present the results of a three year programme on Biodiversity. She will also elaborate the research methodology. Special attention will be given to the role of reflexive monitoring as a way of learning in transition experiments. The foundation ‘Echte Welvaart’ will present a special game they developed on the basis of the programme and the research. The presentation will be in Dutch. It will take place in the Leeuwenborch, Hollandseweg 1, Wageningen, room  V72.