High Performance Education Fails in Sustainability? —A Reflection on Finnish Primary Teacher Education

Abstract

Sustainability is internationally often emphasized as an essential aim of higher education, but more as a principle than on the practical level. This is also obvious in the academic education of primary teachers in Finland. Therefore, it is a great challenge for Finnish teachers to include sustainability in their teaching and everyday life in schools. The aim of this article is to critically analyze why the implementation of sustainability in teacher education is so intricate and to discuss possible solutions with Finland-a country highly valued for its education-as an example. The article reports outcomes from educational policy documents and research on educational, philosophical, scientific and social aspects of sustainability, including evaluation of how sustainability has been implemented in schools and at universities, especially among teacher educators. In addition, the article builds on analyses of comprehensive university strategies and primary school teacher education programs. We found these reasons for the ignoring of sustainability in the Finnish teacher education: sustainability is in conflict with overall trends in society and politics, teacher education takes place at universities and is based on separate academic disciplines. Sustainability is also intricate because it is strongly connected to ecological literacy and it is value dependent. Universities need to overcome these obstacles and become forerunners in the sustainability process.

Systems Thinking for Understanding Sustainability? Nordic Student Teachers’ Views on the Relationship between Species Identification, Biodiversity and Sustainable Development

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Chicken Raising in a Diverse Finnish Classroom: Multidimensional Sustainability Learning

“…The aim of this study was to explore if and how raising chickens in a classroom could promote learning, especially sustainability learning. Missimer et al [3] mentioned trust, common meaning, and diversity, capacity for learning, and capacity for self-organization as crucial in a sustainability context. All of these elements are obvious in our study, not at least trust.…”

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“…The social dimension of sustainability supports equality in culturally-diverse settings. Among many other important questions, sustainability education must deal with inequality and power issues [1] and it should recognize challenges on ethical, cognitive, and practical levels [3]. Based on empirical research, Green and Summerwille [8] distinguish four meta-level categories through which they understand the essential elements of sustainability education:…”