Sustainability Education and Teacher Education: Finding a Natural Habitat?

Abstract

Sustainability education competes for curricular space, both in schools and in teacher education. Opportunities and barriers for the inclusion of sustainability education in an Australian university primary teacher education program are examined in this article. The study focused on the roles, practices and perceptions of teacher educators in promoting sustainability education. Three focus groups were conducted with members of faculty staff from each of the K–6 Key Learning Areas to gather data, which were analysed according to three frameworks: espoused/aspirational and actual practices of staff members; barriers to and affordances for teaching sustainability education; and the nature of initiatives, in terms of teaching/learning activities, assessment tasks, and resources. Beyond the Social Sciences, and Science and Technology, we found that inclusion of sustainability education is somewhat sporadic. The article proposes some ways forward to promote and abet sustainability education in a tertiary context.

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

“…However, for science teacher educators the main goals were "to promote meaningful learning of science concepts and to inspire students' interest in learning about science" [72] (p. 121). Buchanan [73] investigated sustainability education in Australian primary teacher education in a focus group study with teacher educators representing all the subjects in the curriculum of primary education. The analysis of the discussions in focus groups revealed that it was not easy to come to a common and unambiguous understanding of the concept of sustainability education.…”

You mean I have to teach sustainability too? Initial teacher education students’ perspectives on the sustainability cross-curriculum priority

“…We, like others (e.g., Buchanan, 2012;Mills & Tomas, 2013;Nolet, 2009;Summers et al, 2005), believe that teacher education programs must play a critical role in this endeavour. However, it is insufficient and perhaps even neglectful to simply tell ITES they have to embed this CCP (or any CCP, for that matter) across learning areas whilst assuming that somehow ITES will figure this out by themselves.…”

“…Indeed, the literature is replete with evidence of the challenges for in-service teachers and ITES to respond to the calls for prioritizing and implementing sustainability education. A mounting body of literature points to both the limiting and enabling factors that have been encountered with efforts to deliver sustainability in the formal education system in schools (N. Evans, Whitehouse, & Gooch, 2012), in ITE programs (Buchanan, 2012;Mills & Tomas, 2013) and in higher education generally (Cotton, Warren, Maiboroda, & Bailey, 2007;Jones, Selby, & Sterling, 2010). While it is beyond the scope of this paper to review all of these barriers and enablers for the three sectors, a recent Australian study provides a helpful framework for understanding the barriers and enablers to implementing sustainability education (N. Evans et al, 2012).…”

“…Indeed, many teacher educators pride themselves in, and therefore prioritize, teaching content and pedagogies for a specific curriculum area. Moreover, some learning areas are, as Buchanan (2012) notes, "relatively artificial sites for the inclusion of sustainability" (p. 111).…”

“…Yet despite this important role, there is evidence suggesting that university lecturers (in higher education generally) and teacher educators (specifically) have a wide range of understandings of sustainability that are often dominated by environmental understandings, just like the ITES' understandings (Buchanan, 2012;Cotton et al, 2007). If teacher educators' understandings are narrow, and this is what they are teaching ITES, then it seems urgent that the cycle be broken in terms of simply content knowledge.…”