The EGU Geoscience Education Field Officer Programme is growing!

The Geoscience Education Field Officers (GEFO) programme, launched in 2019 by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) Committee on Education (CoE), began in six countries (France, India, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, and Spain) with the support of the International Geoscience Education Organisation (IGEO) and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). Due its success, the EGU Council has approved its extension and the increase of participating countries for the current and upcoming years. Thus, a call was open and CoE received thirty-four teacher’s applications from twenty-two countries belonging to Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. After a selection process, thirteen new GEFOs were appointed to represent Albania, Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, Estonia, Germany, Greece, India, Malaysia, Romania, Togo, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. As all the first GEFOs, the new ones are qualified and experienced geosciences teachers from different levels (Primary, Secondary and Higher education) and/or engaged and committed with Geosciences educational issues. In May 2022, the new GEFOs met in Barcelona for a face to face two-days training session organized and promoted by the ‘old’ GEFOs from Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain, and by their supporters (national teachers who help GEFOs in their role) from Portugal and Spain. The main goal of this training was to introduce the fundamental tool of the GEFO programme – the Earthlearningidea repository of teaching resources (www.earthlearningidea.com) - and provide them with the necessary skills to offer professional development to the teachers in their countries. During this two-days training, the new GEFOs assumed the role of teachers and performed several proposed hands-on activities. This method has allowed them to prepare themselves for their new role by first-hand knowing the activities and sharing knowledge and difficulties with their fellows      but, also, to recognize the barriers that the future attendant teachers can face in the workshops organized by GEFOs. So far, the GEFO team includes nineteenth members from eleven European (the EGU GEFOs) and eight non-European countries (the IGEO/IUGS GEFOs), working as an international network to promote geoscience education in an innovative and global way. In the future, the success of GEFOs programme could justify its expansion to other countries.