Global Critical Friends: Co-Creating Sustainable Practices in Teacher Education

Summary

An engaging workshop-type session where you’ll map your context, tackle real world dilemmas, and experience the Critical Friends model in action through collaborative mapping and engaging discussions.

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Join an international team of presenters and facilitators for an engaging session that explores the journey of becoming global critical friends in teacher education. We will share practical steps and insights from our collaborative work on addressing sustainability across diverse contexts.

Through dialogue and partnership between the University of Namibia and the University of Oulu (Finland), we aim to develop practices that endure beyond funding cycles—ensuring education remains sustainable in every sense. This interactive session explores what it takes to build and sustain these transformative communities of practice.

Step into a globally connected workshop where you’ll map your context, tackle real world dilemmas, and experience the Critical Friends model in action through collaborative mapping and engaging discussions.

Participants will leave inspired with new ideas and connections to help transform teacher education into a force for local and global sustainability and equity.
 

Audience

Researchers and practitioners interested in teacher education.

Format

This event, to be held at 13:00 (UK) on the 3rd June 2026, will last around 90 minutes and will be hosted via Zoom. The event will be in English. Please register via Zoom using the button on this page. The event will be Chaired by a member of the ANGEL advisory board.
 

Session leaders

• Dr. Taimi Nghikembua is an expert in early language literacy acquisition in the Mother Tongue, with extensive experience preparing educators for multicultural classroom environments. As Head of Department in the Early Childhood Education and Care, she oversees teacher education programs across five campuses at the University of Namibia. Her work in children's literature and storytelling aims to preserve and promote indigenous narratives and knowledge, as well as ecoliteracy. She has international experience in partnership building where she has been part of diverse co-creating initiatives in leadership, research and teaching.
• Dr. Maria Helena Saari is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oulu. She currently serves as Co-lead of the education work package of the Strategic Research Council project MUST: Enabling Multispecies Transitions in Cities and Regions. Maria has worked at the forefront of multispecies education research for a decade, leading different education initiatives and working with diverse stakeholders internationally. She is an expert in multispecies education, human-animal studies, environmental education and multispecies governance approaches.
• Ms. Richardine Poulton-Busler is a UNAM lecturer specializing in sustainability education who brings 30 years of expertise to developing environmental curricula and community initiatives. Through partnerships with schools, NGOs, and government bodies, she helped establish environmental education as a core module in UNAM's teacher training. She leads sustainability projects, including a successful tree planting program. Her teaching methodology emphasizes student leadership, empowering learners to design and implement their own sustainability initiatives. 
• Dr. Marika Oikarinen is a teacher educator and researcher currently working at the University of Oulu in the Intercultural Teacher Education Programme. She has worked over a decade as a project coordinator and a teacher educator in Southern Africa, particularly Namibia. Her Phd focused on educational marginalization and explored how to develop a more just education in the hard-to-reach and hard-to-teach contexts. She is actively involved in north-south higher education institutional collaboration and is passionate about developing meaningful partnerships that spearhead transformation and inspire sustainable and equitable (teacher) education. 

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The ANGEL Webinar Series

This event is part of a series of online events run by the Academic Network for Global Education & Learning. The series is aimed at Global Education professionals, as well as anyone with an interest in research in the fields of Development Education, Global Citizenship Education, Human Rights Education, Education for Sustainable Development, Education for Peace, and Intercultural Education. This event, along with the other activities of the ANGEL network, is co-funded by the European Union.**

** The establishment of this network and website has been made possible with funding support from the European Commission. The activities and publications of the network are the responsibilities of the organisers, the Development Education Research Centre, and can in no way be seen as reflecting the views of the European Commission.