The TEK Pulse

Europe faces biodiversity loss, climate disruption and rising pressure on natural systems. That puts a practical question in front of schools and adult educators. How do we move environmental education beyond learning about problems and towards developing the competence to respond to them?

The European Commission's GreenComp framework offers one answer. Published in 2022 by the Commission's Joint Research Centre, it sets out the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that make up sustainability competence, organised into four areas and twelve competences (Bianchi, Pisiotis and Cabrera Giraldez, 2022).

GreenComp is a competence framework. It describes what learners should develop. It does not prescribe a single way of teaching those competences, and that is deliberate. The framework is written as a shared reference for designing learning, not as a curriculum.

That open space is where place-based knowledge, including Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), can contribute. The ecologist Fikret Berkes describes TEK as a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, built up through experience and passed down across generations, concerning the relationships between living beings, including people, and their environment (Berkes, 1999). It is diverse, locally grounded and shaped by particular cultures, ecosystems and histories. It is not a single tradition, and it belongs to no framework.

The phrase place-based comes from place-based education, an approach set out by the educator David Sobel that roots learning in the local environment, community and culture rather than in abstract or distant examples (Sobel, 2004). Here, place-based knowledge is used as an umbrella term. It includes TEK, and also local ecological knowledge, local history and community observation, which are not always TEK. Keeping the wider term makes clear that some of the connections in this tool draw on Indigenous or traditional knowledge, while others rest on local records or scientific evidence.

Used carefully, TEK gives learners concrete contexts in which to practise sustainability competences. The relationship can be set out as a simple sequence.

1. 1
   GreenCompDefines the competences learners need.
2. 2
   Learning ContextThe local environment and its culture.
3. 3
   TEK And Place-Based KnowledgeKnowledge, observation and practice.
4. 4
   Learning ExperienceClassroom, outside the classroom and community.
5. 5
   ActionIndividual and collective response.

GreenComp provides the educational structure. TEK and other place-based knowledge provide meaningful contexts through which learners practise those competences.

GreenComp gives educators a common language for sustainability competence, but learners can learn the definitions of biodiversity, systems thinking or intergenerational fairness without seeing how those ideas work in a particular landscape or community.

Place-based knowledge changes the starting point. Instead of asking only what sustainability is, learners can ask a set of grounded questions.

• How has this place changed?
• What did people once observe here?
• What can we learn from those observations?
• What evidence supports them?
• What should we do differently now?

The relationship also works in the other direction. GreenComp gives learners a contemporary framework for examining traditional and place-based knowledge critically, alongside scientific evidence, historical records and other sources, without treating any one source as automatically more reliable. The aim is integration, not substitution.

The value of bringing GreenComp and TEK into conversation is not that one framework replaces the other. GreenComp provides a common educational structure. TEK can provide specific examples of how people have observed, understood and interacted with particular environments over time. Scientific knowledge adds methods for testing, measuring and explaining those environments, and local history provides evidence of change.

Learners then have a chance to compare sources, question assumptions, investigate their surroundings and make decisions based on evidence. The learning process moves through a clear sequence: framework, place, knowledge, evidence, practice, reflection and action. That is a more useful proposition than asking learners to memorise sustainability concepts.

TEK should be approached as knowledge with context, not as a set of classroom techniques. Fikret Berkes makes the point that traditional knowledge is best understood as a process rather than a fixed body of content, which is why the following principles matter.

• Identify The Knowledge Holder. Traditional knowledge comes from particular peoples, communities and places. Name the source wherever possible, at every age.
• Avoid Generalisation. There is no single, universal form of TEK. Practices differ between cultures and ecosystems.
• Do Not Romanticise. Traditional practices should be investigated critically, like any other source of knowledge.
• Use Multiple Forms Of Evidence. Observation, oral history, scientific data, historical records and contemporary monitoring can all inform the same investigation.
• Respect Knowledge Boundaries. Some cultural knowledge is not intended for public teaching or unrestricted reproduction. British Columbia's First Peoples Principles of Learning state that some knowledge is sacred and only shared with permission or in certain situations.
• Keep The Local Context Central. A local environmental question usually provides a stronger learning context than a generic global example.
• Teach About Traditions; Do Not Perform Them. No ceremonies, sacred objects, costumes or copied artefacts, and no role-play in which learners speak as an Indigenous person. In the Ecosystem Council, learners speak for a place, never for a people.
• Present Living Peoples. Use the present tense where a practice continues. Many of the peoples named in this tool live and practise their knowledge today.
• Keep Knowledge In Its Context. The Saami Council's 2023 climate report states that the observations of its knowledge holders are collectively owned by the Sámi people and cannot be moved from their context. Say where a practice comes from, and do not present it as a general rule.

Learning from other countries matters, but the knowledge closest to learners is often held in their own community. Starting there makes the lessons accessible: every learner can find someone who knows a local place, a season, a seed or a skill.

• Who To Ask. Older residents, grandparents, farmers, allotment holders, gardeners, anglers, park and countryside staff, market traders, cooks, menders and makers, local historians and archive staff.
• What To Ask About. How a place has changed; which plants, birds and insects people remember; the signs people use to read the weather and the seasons; how water, land or fish were shared; local seeds and foods; how things were made to last.
• In Every Language. Families and staff often know sayings and seasonal signs in other languages. Each one is a record worth collecting, tested like any other source.
• Safely. Staff invite visitors under the school's safeguarding policy. Conversations at home are optional and only with an adult the learner already knows. Learners are never asked to share family details in front of others.
• With Respect. Ask permission before recording anything, name the person and place it came from if they agree, and thank them. Some knowledge is not for sharing, and that answer should be respected.

Every lesson in this tool has an In Your Community prompt for teachers and an In Our Community question for learners.

The lessons give every age group the right to learn the same knowledge, in a form that suits them.

• Ages 5 To 8. Concrete, local, playful and adult-led. Each activity has a line for ages 5 to 6 and a line for ages 7 to 8. Named traditions are introduced in short, simple sentences, with the people they come from always named.
• Ages 9 To 10. Guided group work in the local area, with simple evidence and comparisons.
• Ages 11 To 13. Learner-led investigation with guidance, using the working paper's activities as written.
• Ages 14 To 16. Independent and in partnership, with national and global cases and contested questions.
• Adult Learners. Teachers preparing the lesson, and adult groups in workplaces and communities. Learners aged 17 and 18 use these sheets at the teacher's discretion.

Activity 2 in every lesson takes place outside the classroom. The teacher decides where: the school grounds, a field trip the school organises, or an optional task at home with an adult the learner knows.

GreenComp tells us which competences learners need. Place-based knowledge can help them practise those competences. Sustainability education has to prepare learners to understand complex systems, evaluate evidence, imagine different futures and take part in decisions that affect their communities, and GreenComp provides a clear framework for developing those capabilities.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge adds another dimension by showing how particular communities have observed and responded to environmental change across generations. The opportunity for educators is to bring these different knowledge systems into one structured learning process. Learners can begin with their own surroundings, investigate what has changed, listen to local knowledge, examine scientific evidence, question assumptions and decide what action is possible. For learners from age 5 to adult, that creates a practical route from learning about sustainability to developing the competence to act on it.