The circular economy is a sustainability-concept that is embraced by an increasing number of decision makers and companies. The main idea is, to ensure the re-usage of resources, in a way that products are made to be made again. The circular economy reacts on the most urgent questions of mankind, like depletion of resources, pollution, inequalities and climate change.

A society that represents a circular economy, requires other knowledge, skills and attitudes, compared to our current society. The circular economy is an integrated and innovative management approach, where for instance systems thinking and inclusivity are more important, besides regular entrepreneurial competencies. In theThreeC project funded by the European Commission innovative didactical concept was developed and piloted in various European schools. It is based on a competence oriented learning and validation approach to create and foster those competencies amongst students.

The basic idea is, that education for a circular economy aims to develop certain learners’ competencies: systems thinking, multiperspective thinking and designing. The didactical approach describes didactical requirements and teaching strategies within a nine-steps-model.

The nine-steps-approach and teaching strategies for education for a circular economy.

1. Attention - Start a project with the introduction of a situation that triggers learners’ attention. Teaching strategies: feel familiar or wonder.
2. Understand - One should define what’s going on, what the problem is. This results in a question, given by the teacher or formulated by learners themselves (depending on the ability of learners to formulate questions). This is the starting point of an inquiry sequence. Teaching strategies: define the problem, a question.
3. Relate - To give insight into the way how learners can relate themselves to the situation they are going to analyse: what’s in it for me, how am I involved in this situation, how do I feel with this, do I know people who are related to this situation and so on. Teaching strategies: feel interconnected, show empathy.
4. Analyse - Getting grip on causes and consequences of the situation and how one and another is interrelated. Teaching strategies: relate, schematise, change level of analysis, dimensions.
5. Value - To reflect on the analysis and to be aware of the different perspectives that are used to analyse the situation. Was the analysis e.g. mainly optimistic or pessimistic? Important is too, what learners think about the situation themselves, too, in relationship to the opinions of others. Teaching strategies: change perspectives.
6. Solve - The learner values one solution to another and chooses the best option, in relationship to his analysis of the situation (step 4) and relevant opinions (step 5). Teaching strategies: Assist students in choosing a solution for example by organizing a brainstorm.
7. Design - After learners chose the most effective options for solutions, the product should be (re)designed. Teaching strategies: During this step, learners are asked to describe the design (planning) of the production process and the product itself.
8. Present - Learners present their ideas to the contractor. They will try to persuade him or her of their idea. Teaching strategies: Be clear to learners what they are expected to do during the presentation.

Reflect - After redesigning a product, learners should evaluate this. This kind of reflection can focus on different aspects (depending on the formulated objectives): the learning process, the designing process, the results and/or the content of the issue with which it all started at the first place. This final step should deliver meaningful insights that can be used in new situations (transfer). Teaching strategies: Using reflection strategies – for example STARR (Jaspers & Van Zijl, 2011): Describe the situation that you reflect on. Describe who were involved and what their tasks were (including yourself). Describe the activities you’ve been doing. Describe the outcome of these activities: what were the results? Reflect on the results, linked to your task in the activities, related the context where this took place.

A very detailed manual for the didactical approach and 9-steps-programm (including the didactical concept, suggestions for teaching strategies and examples) can be found in the file(s) to download and on the ThreeC website: http://www.threec.eu