Sustainable participatory processes of education technology development

Abstract

According to UNESCO, sustainable education requires a participatory development process. This article reports the results of three case studies about sustainable education using e-learning technologies, where the focus of the analysis is on the need for sustainable and participatory development processes. The research approach is based on a meta-synthesis of three cases that target capacity-building in Maritime Education and Training using modern digital technologies. The result of the analysis is an analytical framework that describes how sustainable development of education needs to be understood as a participatory process of education and technology knowledge development taking place in layers of (1) standards, (2) applications, and (3) in-situ development, and based on an evolutionary and participatory process. The analytical framework contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between education for sustainability and sustainability of education—a relation that is recognized to be of importance, but that is also recognized as not sufficiently conceptualized. As the empirical research in this article evidences, a better understanding of sustainable development processes is of academic as well as practical relevance to build educational capacity using E-Learning technologies.