Understanding of Sustainability and Education for Sustainable Development among Pre-Service Biology Teachers

Abstract

Sustainable development (SD) is one of the global and central aims of today’s politics. As stated in Agenda 21, education must play an essential role in achieving a sustainable society. The present research is focused on Slovenian and Austrian biology teacher students’ understanding of SD and education for sustainable development (ESD). The research was carried out at the University of Ljubljana and the University of Vienna. Altogether, 60 Slovenian and 60 Austrian pre-service biology teachers participated in the questionnaire-based study. Pre-service biology teachers answered a set of Likert-type and open survey questions. Less than half of the pre-service biology teachers from Slovenia and Austria had a good understanding of the environmental aspects of SD, but they lack understanding of the interconnections between the environmental, economic and social dimensions related to SD. They describe and connect ESD with environmental education and environmental awareness. Students from both countries know some pedagogical principles of ESD, such as active learning and transformative education. Analysis with the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in focus showed that only some of them were mentioned by the teacher students. The results of the research contribute to the evaluation and development of curriculum for middle and high school biology teachers.

I Want to Teach Sustainable Development in My English Classroom: A Case Study of Incorporating Sustainable Development Goals in English Teaching

“…First, most of the studies [4,5,14,[27][28][29][30][31] were posited on the implementation in SDGs at higher education level by analysing the relevancy of the course contents to the SDGs. A very few focussed on implementing SDGs in K-12 education [8][9][10][11][12][13][15][16][17][18]32].…”

“…Their limited experiences and knowledge of sustainable development hampered them from developing a holistic conception of sustainable development, thereby limiting their horizons in perceiving the possibilities of incorporating sustainable development in their language teaching [14]. As for STEM teachers, they believed that their professional role was to present factual information instead of addressing social or ethical issues or inviting students to evaluate or make a judgement [11,14,32]. Such personal beliefs on professional roles made them feel sustainable development was something beyond their main expertise areas and inhibits their interest in further incorporating SD in their teaching [9,29].…”

“…Scholars [8,11,13] generally believed that an interdisciplinary approach in ESD could unfold each discipline's contribution to allow a holistic understanding of various interlocking parts of the problem. Theoretically, teaching methodologies like transdisciplinary problem-oriented teaching, real-world pedagogies and project-based learning across a broad range of subjects were recommended [31,32,[36][37][38]. When it comes to actual implementation, teachers still found the definition of interdisciplinary approach too abstract, whereby they showed insufficient understanding of the reciprocal relationships between different approaches to sustainability [9,32,39].…”

“…Theoretically, teaching methodologies like transdisciplinary problem-oriented teaching, real-world pedagogies and project-based learning across a broad range of subjects were recommended [31,32,[36][37][38]. When it comes to actual implementation, teachers still found the definition of interdisciplinary approach too abstract, whereby they showed insufficient understanding of the reciprocal relationships between different approaches to sustainability [9,32,39]. During execution, teachers felt that the interdisciplinary practice First, scholars [9][10][11][12]14,18] suggested that teachers' values and beliefs negatively influence their perception of ESD, which was reflected in their lack of interest in implementing sustainable development in their teaching.…”

The Readiness of Integrating Sustainable Development Into Biology Teacher Education Program

“…In fulfilling the needs of the present generation, all facets of life for the future generation must always be on the monitor for their sustainable future (Ariffin & Foo, 2020;Bezeljak, Scheuch, & Torkar, 2020). ESD therein seeks to balance the well-being of the human, economic, social, and cultural traditions with respect for the natural resources on Earth (Wahono & Chang, 2019).…”