Green Pedagogy: Using Confrontation and Provocation to Promote Sustainability Skills

Abstract

The chapter describes the features of Green Pedagogy, originally developed in Austria in German where it is still being actively researched. Green Pedagogy offers a structured approach to lesson planning to achieve embedded sustainability competencies within a specific vocational or academic field. The Green Pedagogy approach achieves sustainability competency through a controlled appeal to the emotions and the explicit uncovering of learner values to take on new ideas and new perspectives in a more sustainable direction. The approach is compatible with many recommended Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) pedagogies such as project-based teaching and the case study approach. The approach also implements several more general evidence-based pedagogical strategies such as concept change. The key feature of Green Pedagogy is that the process ends with locally based action whose wider implications are explored. We relate some of the challenges involved in translating a pedagogical approach from one language to another as the ProfESus Erasmus project aimed to disseminate Green Pedagogy to a global cohort of teachers of home economics in English. Reactions of participating teachers in the piloting of the training are explored and some practical solutions offered.

How Primary School Teachers Perceive and Develop Students’ Future Skills?

“…Al-Ghamdi [29] found that training programs did not keep up with worldwide trends. In a study by Fox [18], teachers reported that their capacity to adopt future skills was hindered by ineffective technology use and a lack of time. Moreover, teachers reported a mismatch between future skills and the information evaluated on standardized tests.…”

“…Previous studies found that teachers developed critical thinking and problem-solving skills to a moderate degree [17,54], while other studies found an even lower rate [33,34,51]. Avrakotos [51] noted that teachers developed critical thinking skills in students infrequently, which Fox [18] attributed to a disparity between those skills and what is assessed on standardized tests. In contrast, this study showed higher results in those areas (M = 4.03, SD = 0.630).…”

“…These skills are especially important for primary school students since their foundational stages of formal education will influence future achievement. As a result, numerous studies have called for incorporating these skills into educational material and activities [14,15] and increasing student participation [16,17], and research has suggested that teachers practicing such skills in the classroom could improve learning [18].…”