Training the Builders of a Sustainable Future
At FIRDA — a vocational education institution serving the Friesland region and northern Flevoland in the Netherlands — sustainability is not a subject alongside others in the curriculum: it is one of four core institutional commitments that shape the entire educational offer. The Centrum Duurzaam (Sustainability Centre) is the vehicle through which this commitment becomes concrete, particularly for students in construction, housing, and interior design programmes.
The centre is built around a six-step model for “lifelike education” — an approach that deliberately blurs the boundary between school and the real world, bringing students into contact with actual clients, real challenges, and genuine professional environments from the very beginning of their training.
The Six Steps: From Site Visit to Shared Solutions
The process begins with a site visit: students go with their teachers to the client’s location to hear directly about the challenge they will be working on. Discovery and experience begin immediately, before any classroom instruction. From this first encounter, the students’ work unfolds through subsequent steps that involve research, design, testing, and ultimately the development of practical solutions — often in collaboration with companies from the region.
One example involves students working with a tiny house project developed by Heijmans, exploring the intersection of sustainability, affordability, and innovative construction technology. The fact that assignments are real — that someone is genuinely waiting for the students’ ideas and solutions — creates a quality of motivation and engagement that traditional classroom exercises rarely achieve.
Teachers as Co-Learners
A particularly innovative feature of Centrum Duurzaam is its recognition that the sustainability transition requires teachers to learn and adapt, not just students. FIRDA organises sustainable expeditions outside the school for educators, helping them professionalise around sustainability themes and develop practical questions and assignments that they can then use in their classes. The movement towards sustainability starts with the educators — and the centre invests accordingly.
Relevance for Sustainable Learning
Centrum Duurzaam FIRDA is an inspiring model for how non-formal learning methods can be embedded within formal vocational education to create genuinely transformative experiences. It connects to SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).
Website: circulairfriesland.frl
Contact: Roeland Westra – duurzaam@rocfriesepoort.nl
