Socio-Environmental Problematic, End-Purposes, and Strategies Relating to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through the Perspectives of Spanish Secondary Education Trainee Teachers

Abstract

<jats:p>In this paper, representations of Spanish Secondary Education trainee teachers (n = 163) are analyzed with regard to the socio-environmental problematic, end-purposes, and strategies of education for sustainable development (ESD). Likewise, the study seeks to identify the potential influence of sociodemographic variables on those representations and, in particular, possible differences between either the perceptions or the beliefs of trainee teachers of Geography and History and those from other disciplines. The study can be classified as a non-experimental ex post facto investigation based on a questionnaire, yielding results that reflected the commitment of the students towards teaching through the implementation of strategies directed at conflict resolution for social transformation, and towards teaching the development of critical and creative thinking skills for social interventions. Likewise, the study reports the promotion of specific socio-educational actions leading to sustainable development. These results show the absence of differences in terms of the sex, age, institutional affiliation, background discipline or specialism, or previous training in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the students. Despite the identification of greater tendencies towards the conceptualized development of social awareness and active citizenship among trainee teachers of Geography and History, these results reflected the pertinence and the educational need for ESD in higher education from a holistic and transversal perspective.</jats:p>

What Does Education for Sustainable Development Offer in Initial Teacher Training? A Systematic Review

“…Our research verifies and offers a response to the study by Brandisauskiene et al (2021, p.167) when the results obtained in our research work express the need to train, from a vision of sustainable development, the future teacher in a prioritized and critical way, creating an interest in producing knowledge and culture and, in this way, expanding their horizons more and more in the face of the need to develop critical and creative thinking skills for social intervention (Albareda et al, 2018;Ortega et al, 2020).…”

A Preliminary Study Comparing Pre-service and In-service School Principals’ Self-Perception of Distributed Leadership Competencies in Relation to Teaching and Managerial Experience

“…Although there are studies such as the one developed by Pont et al (2008) , where it is stated that the practice of school leadership requires specific skills and competencies that may not have been developed exclusively with TE, the results of this study and the current conditions of systemic change within educational environments require school principals’ holistic understanding and specific competencies, that are gained through TE and ME. This is in line also with the study conducted by Ortega-Sánchez et al (2020) that stressed the importance of developing school policies and teaching practice toward the inclusion of contemporary social problems in the curriculum at all education levels holistically.…”

“…Over the last decades, universities and academics have put efforts to develop sustainability competencies’ frameworks and educational interventions, and to embed these mainly in higher education and teacher training ( Wiek et al, 2011 ; Brundiers et al, 2021 ). However, the existing literature shows that further embedment of sustainability in pre-service teacher education, and specific training and professional development programmes on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) for teachers and school principals are required to genuinely engage the school community in sustainability and to put in practice the leadership approaches necessary to build sustainable schools ( Zachariou et al, 2013 ; Dyment and Hill, 2015 ; Ortega-Sánchez et al, 2020 ).…”

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