Understanding sustainability is important, as people need to cope with issues associated with over-population and over-consumption. Education is seen as a key strategy to assist with the development of people's understandings of this complex concept, which could then lead to them being able to make more sustainable lifestyle decisions. In order to teach this concept, teachers need to understand sustainability. This paper investigated 77 New Zealand student teachers' understandings of sustainability and the level of self-awareness of their understandings. A definition of sustainability was developed for this research from which two tools were constructed to measure these teachers' level of understanding and self-awareness. Findings showed that many of these student teachers had simplistic understandings of sustainability that were focused on an environmental component. Further evidence of their low level of understanding was illustrated in the way that over half of this group were not able to accurately rate their own level of understanding. These findings suggest a need for the development of teachers' understandings of sustainability so that they can plan and teach effective sustainability education programmes.

Empowering students to act in an environmentally responsible manner is being increasingly touted as a central goal of formal environmental education. Acting in a responsible manner requires the development of environmental knowledge as well as positive attitudes and values towards the environment along with other attributes. While some guidance about how to plan and teach environmental education is available in curriculum and policy documents, teachers are often either unfamiliar with such documents and/or unaware of the theories and pedagogy of environmental education (Cutter-Mackenzie & Smith, 2003; Eames, Cowie, & Bolstad, 2008). This paper offers a definition of environmentally responsible behaviour and identifies the role that knowledge could play when environmentally responsible action is taken by students that could be useful for teachers.Three different lenses are used to examine the knowledge developed by 11-12 year old students and their subsequent actions during engagement in an environmental education programme (n=22). The lenses consist of a cluster of types of knowledge developed by Jensen (2002), a framework for analysing understandings of sustainability and the type of actions taken (Jensen & Schnack, 1997; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002).The results suggest that these students developed different types of knowledge that informed the actions taken and that their actions can be categorised as action competence. It is also suggested that these types of knowledge need to be taught explicitly. A three part model is then proposed that could assist students to learn about the nature of action, enabling them to work towards potential solutions for complex environmental issues.

In order to teach about sustainability, teachers need to be able to translate their personal understanding of this concept into their pedagogy in ways that make it accessible to their learners. This translation process is known as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This study investigated the way that two teachers translated their understanding of sustainability into their pedagogy and the effects of this translation on children's learning (n = 18). Two interpretive case studies were constructed. Data were generated using interviews and documents. Two frameworks were used to analyse the data. One was a definition of sustainability and the other a model of PCK expressed as pedagogical context knowledge (PCxK) that consisted of four components. The findings showed that the translation of sustainability was a complex interaction of three of the PCxK components with some use of the fourth. Some children developed an understanding of sustainability but only two were able to link their understanding with the scientific concepts taught resulting in 'diffused learning'. Also, these findings suggest that while the PCxK model used to analyse the translation process had a degree of precision and heuristic power, further refinement is needed in order for this model to explicate teachers' PCK.

Concerns about the standard of educators drove the professionalisation of teaching and teacher education in the 1980s, which in turn led to the development of PCK. PCK is a construct that is concerned with how educators transform content knowledge to make it accessible for learners in a particular context (Shulman, 1986). Shulman's concept of PCK focuses on two crucial components of teaching, namely understanding and representation. While there is general agreement among the researchers about the components of PCK, there is no universally accepted conceptualisation. Issues about the efficacy of PCK models to accurately portray teachers' pedagogy led Gess-Newsome (1999) to develop a continuum for PCK models: at one end is the integrative type of model and at the other, the transformative type. Placement on the continuum is dependent upon the degree of interaction between components. To make a distinction between the two ends, Gess-Newsome (1999) used the scientific analogy of 'mixture versus compound'. In the integrative type, PCK components, although seemingly integrated, can be easily separated out into constituent parts, like components in a mixture. Thus there is not a high level of interaction between the components. The transformative model, on the other hand, represents a synthesis of

No abstract